Got (Real) Milk?
Today, a friend sent me a screenshot of a Facebook post which read “Hello, does anyone know where I [can] purchase real cow’s milk? Not store milk, but from a real actual cow.”
At first, I thought *maybe* the Original Poster meant that they just wanted to purchase their dairy products farm to table. But as my friend confirmed, they did not — Original Poster genuinely thought milk purchased in a store was “fake” milk.
Point numero uno: milk from a dairy cow purchased at the store is real milk, just as milk from a dairy cow purchased from a dairyman/woman is also real milk. I could stop the column there because truly, that’s the most complex way I can explain this.
Point number two (this is where I get long winded): WHAT THE HECK? How is it, that we as a society, are so far removed from agriculture that we question whether or not store-bought milk is actual, real-life, milk from a cow?
There’s a number of factors to blame here. The first is that the “milk” section at stores has become over saturated with alternative milk sources such as Almond Milk, Oat Milk, Coconut Milk, Soy Milk, etc. that the average consumer thinks all milk must be “fake.” So who do we blame for this? Grocery stores? Alternative milk source companies?
On the point of alternative milk companies: are they all bad? No, not all of them — but there are some dirty players in the alternative milk game. Take Oatley for example. Have y’all forgotten about the Super Bowl Commercial of Oatley’s founder singing the creepy “wow, no cow!” song? Because I haven’t!
Another party we can blame here is consumers for not doing their own research to learn about the food system. As agriculturists, we are often told “people want to know where their food comes from.” But are these people taking the initiative, themselves, to learn where their food comes from on their own? From the looks of this Facebook post, the answer there is no.
However, when someone DOES seek information about the food system, are they looking at trusted sources? Or are they checking out blog posts from anti-ags, or getting their information from an animal activists’ Instagram feed? So now who’s to blame, the media?
This list could go on and on, but that old saying “when you point a finger, you’ve got three fingers pointing back at you” keeps coming to mind.
I argue that although there are many different parties and factors which contribute to the agricultural ignorance of consumers, it is OUR job as agriculturists to fix this. Consumers may want to know where their food comes from, but who’s the ones sharing this information with them? People like Oatley’s founder, who sang the creepy “wow, no cow” song — that’s who.
We can’t just sit back and shake our heads when we see a Facebook post like the one referenced at the beginning of this column, we have to correct it; we have to spread our agricultural information; and we have to share agriculture’s story because if we don’t, the anti-ags will.
