By BOURGEOIS (PIERRE)
Whether we like milk or not, we all began our lives drinking it.
But we are the only mammals to continue drinking it once we reach adulthood, and the only mammals to drink the milk of another mammal.
Neither vegetable nor mineral, milk is also our only drink to come from a human being or animal, most often a cow. In India, cows are sacred as they give milk - the cow is revered as the mother of all men. Milk can be found everywhere in India, at all times of day. And India is today the world's number one producer of milk.
In less than a century, milk has become the second world food industry. But would we be talking about the globalisation of milk if a real revolution hadn't occurred - the invention of its conservation?
It is impossible to ship such a fragile foodstuff without industrial packaging. It was in Switzerland in the 1870's that Henry Nestl¨¦, a German chemist, prepared the great milk revolution by pioneering its conservation. He also had the idea of recreating breast milk and shipping it to all four corners of the planet.
During this film, we discover stables in the heart of Bombay, we learn that milk promotes spiritual elevation, that mare's milk is the great ally of dermatologists, that Cleopatra owed her silky body to ass's milk, that producing raw milk in California is a sign of rebellion and a source of wealth, and that China is finally starting to drink milk.
|