Original subtitles

As a nation, we consume

over 20 million liters of milk every day.

And right now, factories across the country

are processing milk from nearly two million cows.

[cheerful bright music]

[cow mooing]

It's a modern day miracle that we all take for granted,

but it's a race against time.

Cow to carton in 24 hours.

How do they do it?

Well, tonight we are taking you inside

one of the largest fresh milk processing plants on earth

to find out.

[bright music]

[Gregg] I'm Gregg Wallace and I have been given

exclusive access

to see how this dairy factory can process

2,000 liters of milk in under a minute.

When you see all of this hi-tech machinery,

it's easy to forget it's actually coming from the cow.

How cutting edge science is used

to create the perfect drop.

We do a bit of a taste,

just like you would taste a good wine, it's just milk.

[Gregg] And how new technology

will change the future of milking.

Mate, I love this, I absolutely love this.

[Cherry] I'm Cherry Healey.

I'll be following the milk off-site

to help me discover what is it about milk

that some of us can't tolerate?

That's the difference between me

being able to have a milkshake or not?

[Mark] Yeah.

And revealing how milk makes

the nation's favorite dessert.

That may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

[Gregg] Along the way historian, Ruth Goodman

will investigate our complicated history

with the white stuff.

[Ruth] A maid might have to milk

as many as 10 cows in the morning

before she could even start making the butter.

[Gregg] We'll be meeting robots.

Whoa, whoa, ah.

And people who have worked in dairies all their lives.

Been in this business 18 years, in a fridge.

I effectively was a robot.

Most days 1 1/2 million liters of milk

will pass through here on the way to your supermarket shelf.

This is the incredible story

of the factories that feed Britain.

[cheerful bright music]

[upbeat music]

Tonight I'm gonna show you the remarkable journey

of milk through Arla Dairies,

one of the biggest producers of milk,

cheese and butter in Britain.

It's a cooperative, owned by thousands of farmers

across Europe, including Neil and Jane Dyson.

They're cute, aren't they?

I've come to their third generation dairy farm

in Buckinghamshire to see how it all begins,

with a herd of 500 Holstein Friesians.

Here's your Uncle Greggy, come to give you some lunch.

The Dysons rear 120 young heifers a year

that are especially bred to produce milk.

How do we go from baby cow to milk?

When they're 15 months old

they'll get pregnant for the first time.

Then they'll have their first calf

when they're two years old

and then they'll start producing milk.

'Cause obviously no calf, no milk.

[Gregg] How can you guarantee that every different heifer

is gonna fancy the same looking bull?

It's not been a problem in the past.

[Gregg] After calving, cows produce milk for 9 months,

then they need to be artificially inseminated,

keep having more calves and keep producing milk.

I have to confess to being slightly uncomfortable

with so many big cows.

- [Jane] 700 kilos. - [Gregg] Don't let 'em get me.

That one's gonna slip over, fall over and crush me.

[cow mooing]

- [cheerful music] - [Neil] Come on, girls.

[Gregg] Milking starts at 4:30 in the morning

and every day the Dysons' milk for 16 1/2 hours.

This one's hiding at the back, come on.

I'm going to help.

[Neil] Are you ready?

[Gregg] No, I'm a little bit nervous.

[Neil] It's not tricky

once you've done it a few hundred times.

[upbeat music]

So you're now looking at the backside of 34 cows.

Would you like to choose your cow?

- This one. - Okay.

You hold her there and you squeeze down.

[Gregg] Before we can get started, we need to check

for something that all dairy farmers fear.

[Neil] Right, her milk's good.

If she's got mastitis, which is an infection,

then it would be watery with horrible clots.

If they have mastitis we must make sure

we give her some antibiotics, and if we do that,

then she mustn't be milked with the rest of the cows,

she must be kept separate,

'cause you and I must not have that milk

that's had the antibiotics in it, we must throw that away.

Put your finger inside here

and can you feel pulse, pulse, pulse?

That's the sucking, like the baby calf would suck you.

Take this and put it onto her teat.

[machine whooshing]

You can hear it sucking, can't you?

Oh that's it, yeah, that's it you got that one.

[Gregg] You're okay, there you go.

Number three and

number four.

And if you look in here, you can actually see the milk.

[cheerful upbeat music]

[Gregg] In around 24 hours, this milk will be bottled

and ready to drink.

Do you refrigerate the milk straight away?

Before it goes into our big tank,

it's cooled to 3 degrees C.

When there's no more milk coming out,

the machine stops milking automatically.

There it goes, automatically off.

[Gregg and Neil laughing]

I'm never gonna see a bowl of breakfast cereal

in the same way again, ever.

[uplifting bright music]

The Dysons' cows produce 12,000 liters a day,

which is destined for the enormous dairy factory

13 miles away in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

1 1/2 hours after milking, Paula DaSilva Pereira arrives

to collect the milk in an insulated tanker

which will keep it chilled at around 3 degrees.

The Dyson's are paid according to the quality of the milk,

so a daily sample needs to be taken.

What do we want in the milk?

We want good fat. We want high protein.

I mean, what does it vary by?

It could vary by 10%, which doesn't sound a lot.

But for us it could mean a penny or two per liter,

12,000 liters, every day.

- That could be the profit. - Yeah.

Perfect.

[Gregg] Do we test this or does this go off now?

[Neil] It goes off, yeah.

[Gregg] They don't trust us to test it.

No.

Well, I'm a food and drink expert as you know,

and let me tell you, this milk looks really good to me.

Oh, brilliant.

All right, don't worry about a thing.

[Neil] Come on, Gregg.

Oh, crikey.

It's like being a fireman.

I'll catch up with the Dysons' milk later

at the dairy factory after Paula

has finished the remainder

of her 96-mile route collecting from two other farms.

Well, there's a truck full of milk just left the farm,

but that is just one of tens of thousands

delivering milk all over the nation.

And we go through milk in huge quantities.

Actually the fact that we can drink milk

in that much quantity really makes us quite unusual.

[gentle lilting music]

[puppies yapping]

Almost all of us can digest milk as babies,

it's a trait we share with other mammals.

But amazingly there's only one mammal

that can keep digesting milk into adulthood

and that's us.

Even then up to two thirds of the world's adult population

find milk difficult to stomach.

Every time you try and get to sleep,

it feels like a witch's cauldron's

going off in your stomach.

If I have a lot of it,

then I can spend some time in the bathroom.

[Cherry] What is it about milk that some of us can't tolerate?

Whole milk is made up of 87% water, 8.3% protein,

fat and vitamins combined,

and 4.7% milk sugars called lactose,

which can cause problems.

During childhood many of us stop producing an enzyme

called lactase, which helps break down the milk sugars

and they become lactose intolerant.

It's a condition that's surprisingly common.

About 50 million Americans struggle to digest milk.

In the south of France half the locals must say "Non"

to a glass of the white stuff.

[lilting music]

And for the Chinese, astonishingly,

90% of them are lactose intolerant.

[gentle upbeat music]

So why is it that so many people in the world

have a problem with milk?

The man who should know is Professor Mark Thomas,

he's been studying evolutionary genetics for over 22 years.

What is this?

Okay, so this is the piece of DNA sequence around the bit

that controls whether you digest the sugar in milk.

So this DNA sequence is what most people have?

[Mark] Most people in the world, yes.

[Cherry] And most people who have this DNA sequence

cannot digest lactose, they cannot drink milk.

That's right, as adults.

So if the norm is to not be able to drink milk, what happened?

How come most of us here in Britain can?

Well, we're unusual.

People in northwest Europe are generally

what we like call freaks of nature.

[Cherry] Scientists think

the reason most Europeans can drink milk,

is because of a random genetic mutation

that first occurred in Hungry thousands of years ago.

There's been a change in this DNA sequence,

somewhere in the last 10 or 12,000 years.

This one here will be changed to that.

And that's only one in 3,000 million of these letters

in your genome, it's just one, just that one change.

That's it? That's the difference between me being able

to have a milkshake or not?

Yeah.

[Cherry] Some theories suggest being able to drink milk

would have been a huge advantage in times of famine.

You were much more likely to survive

if you were able to digest such a nutrient-rich food.

So the lucky mutation from C to T in the gene sequence

quickly spread across Europe

where most of us can now drink milk.

So do I have this genetic mutation

that makes me tolerant to milk?

A few weeks ago, I took a simple home DNA swab test

to find out.

I sent it off to the lab and I believe you have the results.

[Mark] I do indeed, yes.

I wish I had a drum roll or some kind of crescendo,

but I don't.

Right, so you are.

- Yay, I'm a mutant. - You're a mutant.

[Cherry] Hurray.

Not only are you a mutant, but you are a mutant mutant.

You actually get two copies of this,

one from your mother and one from your father.

So you get a double shot at being able

to digest the sugar in milk.

Wow, I want a double latte.

Yeah, there you go, an excuse for a double latte.

To match my double genetic mutation.

Exactly.

[gentle upbeat music]

So one single mutation that I

and most people in Britain have in our genes

has turned us into a nation of milk lovers.

Pretty good for a random chance.

[jaunty music]

[Gregg] I'm at one of the biggest fresh milk dairies

in the world.

Here people work 24/7, processing up to a whopping

650 million liters a year.

Enough to fill 260 Olympic-size swimming pools.

And two hours after leaving the cow,

the milk tanker full of the Dyson's milk is arriving.

It's one of the 75 tankers that deliver

to the milk intake area every day,

overseen by technician Colin Keyes.

Give me some idea of the scale.

How much milk is coming through here.

Well, roughly this site does

about 1.5 million liters a day.

See, that's really hard for me

to get my head around that sort of scale.

It's massive, it's massive.

[Gregg] There's Paula.

- You all right, love? - Hiya.

[Gregg] What happens here, Colin?

I'm gonna make sure the milk that goes to the customer

is good quality, that is my job.

You're the bouncer.

- I am the bouncer. - Nothing bad gets past you.

I'm not a very big bouncer, but I'm a bouncer, yeah.

And what Paula's gonna do is get a sample.

So why are we checking again?

Well, you just checked one farm,

but now you've got other farms throwing in their milk

where it could be contaminated.

[Gregg] We check it before we know

whether she can unload it.

That's right, because if we don't check it,

the milk goes into the system and we don't want that.

Will you send the truck away if it's not right?

Yes, it will be rejected.

If the temperature was incorrect, it's gone,

the whole lot.

If it's over eight degrees, it's gone.

Antibiotic failure, it's gone.

24,000 liters of milk will be rejected

on one farm messing up.

Mate, that is mental.

So I'm gonna go and check your milk

and we'll be right back to let you know

whether you can unload it or not, okay?

Okay, perfect, I will wait.

[upbeat music]

[Colin] Now we need to do a bit of a taste.

With all this millions of pounds worth of kit here,

you still have to taste it?

Yeah, I have to taste every single tanker.

I just microwave it, we're basically pasteurizing it.

Just like you would taste a good wine, this is like,

it's just milk.

I'm gonna smell it.

Smell that, it smells malty.

It smells good, doesn't it?

It smells like a bedtime drink I had as a kid.

Exactly, exactly that.

Just checking for any taints, can you taste anything?

Does it taste nice and clear?

To me it tastes absolutely lovely,

I just wanna put some sugar in there.

[Colin] It does, it does taste good doesn't it?

Can we cook up some more?

We can have as much as you want, Gregg.

Put some chocolate powder in there, be excellent.

That tastes very good.

Now I am gonna check there's no antibiotics in the milk.

So I'm gonna put it on a heating block, 180 seconds.

We're testing for antibiotics, what is the danger to us?

We don't want antibiotics in the milk chain,

so people sort of become immune to the antibiotics.

Now I understand why you get so strung up

- about this stuff. - [Colin] We do.

[Gregg] Antibiotics are given to cows that are sick,

just like humans, and need to be carefully controlled.

By using an indicator strip, Colin can tell

if antibiotic molecules are present in the milk.

We've got the fat line at the bottom

and the thin line at the top, so we know

that the milk is a good quality.

We can go out to the tanker now, we can open the valve,

push start and get that milk into one of those silos.

[upbeat music]

I knew that lot would be fine

because I actually helped milk them.

Two hours, 10 minutes after milking,

thousands of liters of the Dysons' milk can now be pumped

into one of the 12 raw milk silos that I'm underneath.

[Gregg exclaims]

There's 300,000 liters above us in each of these silos.

[Gregg] Between them, these silos

can hold over six million pints.

-It's a little James Bond. - [Colin] It is a little James.

But I feel a little bit uncomfortable

underneath such a volume of liquid.

If that now split open, I'd know what a Coco Pop feels like.

[laughs] Exactly.

[Gregg] The Dysons' milk is stored in these raw milk silos

for almost 16 hours waiting for its turn to be processed.

Once released, the critical next stage

is the processing zone, where raw milk is treated

under the watchful eye

of Process Technician, Mario Salvador.

Welcome to the process control room.

[Gregg] What on earth is this?

Well, the thing is that on this process control room

things happen very fast.

One drop of milk is able to go from that silo

into this silo, which is finished milk, in 55 seconds.

So let me get this right.

- We have got raw milk here. - Yep.

And it will go through all of this in 55 seconds time,

it's milk in here ready to be drunk by me, the customer.

That's correct.

Are you lying to me?

No, definitely not, I'm gonna show you.

[cheerful music]

This is the processing floor

where the Dysons' milk arrives 18 hours, 10 minutes

after leaving the cow.

Here, 1 1/2 million liters of milk,

enough to fill two jumbo jets, is treated

in over six miles of pipes by a state-of-the-art,

fully automated system running 24 hours a day.

When you see all of this hi-tech machinery,

it's easy to forget it's actually coming from the cow.

All the milk here is put through a four-stage process,

starting with separation, then standardization,

homogenization and finally pasteurization.

The first thing we need to do is to get rid of the fat.

The milk comes into this machine, which is separated.

That is spinning around at 4,500 rpms,

all the fat globules will go in the top,

the skim will go at the bottom

and we're gonna be able to separate the fat from the skim.

You take all the fat out at this stage

and then you can put it back in again.

At the end, yes.

[Gregg] Once the milk is separated

it needs to be precisely standardized,

by now adding some fat back in.

In the standardizing machine the computer controls

how much fat is added back into the skimmed milk.

3.5% for whole milk, 1.7% for semi-skimmed,

and unsurprisingly 0% for skimmed.

But the next problem they face is the fat won't mix evenly.

If you have a glass of raw milk

and you leave it for a few hours,

you're gonna have a line on the top.

We don't want to do that, we wanna perfect solution,

clear and white.

[Gregg] To solve this predicament,

the next step is homogenization,

which became common practice

because consumers preferred their milk

without a layer of cream on the top.

The milk is forced through small holes at high pressure,

smashing the fat globules till they become tiny

and dispersed.

That cream that we used to get on the top of the milk,

that doesn't happen anymore.

That's not gonna happen.

[Gregg] The final step is pasteurization,

which kills off the majority of bacteria in the milk.

This is happening on these plates,

so what we do here is we heat up the milk,

up to 74.5 degrees, and then the milk goes through,

very fast, through those pipes

for 28 seconds at 74.5 degrees.

And that's pasteurization.

That's correct.

[Gregg] The Dysons' milk has now moved

into a chilled holding tank, to be mixed

for about 30 minutes before the next stage

of its remarkable journey.

Who knew all that? I most certainly didn't.

You see a cow, you know it produces milk,

you think it goes in a carton.

I had absolutely no idea our milk goes through

so many processes.

[jaunty music]

- [machine whirring] - [machine banging]

Back at the dairy factory, the next vital stage

for our milk is for it to be bottled.

40,000 plastic bottles an hour are blow molded

in a process so secret

that it has to be kept from competitors,

so I'm not allowed to see it.

And there's no point making them somewhere else,

you'd just be transporting air, so they're made here,

in a factory on site.

A million bottles a day.

Once they're created, the empty bottles

are transported to the colossal filling hall.

[uplifting music]

It's the size of the pitch at Wembley Stadium,

containing six filling lines.

Brilliant, all of a sudden it's got milk in it.

Up until now milk has just been in vast volumes

that I can't compute.

Now I can see a bottle that I buy.

And in this highly automated world

the only guy I can find here is Miles Lord,

Production Team Leader.

Do you know how fast this is going?

Well, this filler now

is running at 17,000 bottles an hour.

Which is the same as 4.7 a second.

- Nearly five bottles a second? - Nearly five bottles a second.

There's three stages to the filling.

When it first comes in, it runs at a slower rate

and that stops it splashing up and foaming.

Then the speed increases, we put more in.

And the last bit we slow that right down again,

just so it doesn't foam at the top.

- And that's how I pour my beer. - Exactly.

[Gregg] It's got to keep moving, hasn't it?

[Miles] If we have the line standing for 20 minutes,

we've got to get rid of the milk that's on the line.

[Gregg] Just 23 hours and 56 minutes

after leaving the cow, I can watch our milk get bottled,

although it can take up to 48 hours to reach this point.

What's happening now?

We've filled the bottle up and within seconds,

within point seconds, we put a cap on it.

I can't think of anything worse

than milk dripping all over my shopping.

How can you guarantee that that lid is on?

[Miles] Everything we do is checked at every stage

to make sure that the milk is fine.

We have a camera, it's looking at every single bottle

that goes out and it's saying "Is that in the right place?"

[Gregg] And what happens if it's not?

If it's not it'll reject it.

Can we put one on there that isn't right

and see what happens?

We can.

[Gregg] To test the camera, we've taken the foil seal off

and replaced the lid.

[Miles] So it should be spotting it.

[machines buzzes]

Yay.

There you go, that's our bottle.

Do you load it into these cartons of milk?

We don't do that here, no.

- Good. - Do you not like those?

No, the whole nation hates them.

- Okay, yeah. - This is what we want.

You can open that and not end up with it over your jumper.

Yeah, absolutely, hopefully.

[serene music]

[Gregg] While I'm bowled over

at the scale of bottled milk produced here,

Arla makes another product on a mammoth scale

that gets spread on our toast every morning.

The cooperative produces 43% of the UK's butter.

And Ruth is retracing the steps of Victorian dairy maids

to discover just how butter used to be made.

[lilting music]

[Ruth] Before refrigeration, milk went sour very quickly,

so farmers had to come up with ways not to waste it.

[cow mooing]

The answer? Turn it into butter.

But it was hard physical labor

and as it was considered indoor work

mostly a job for dairy maids, many as young as 13.

A maid might have to milk as many as 10 cows in the morning

before she could even start making the butter.

That's about 2 1/2 hours work before you've even begun.

On this working Victorian farm in Shropshire,

Ingrid Hartung keeps traditional techniques alive.

She chills milk in cool water

to make the cream rise to the top

and skims it off to make butter.

So there it is, our lovely cream.

And then of course from this we make yellow butter.

That's right, in the spring, summer

it is actually a nice yellow rich color,

because of course the natural ingredients

that the cows are eating when they're grazing outside

makes a nice yellow color.

[Ruth] Although grass looks green,

there's actually a yellow-orange chemical

called beta carotene found in every mouthful a cow eats.

In winter, when the cows eat less grass,

they produce a much paler butter

which is less appealing to consumers.

So here we are trying to do this in the middle of winter

which is, um, challenging.

Challenging. [laughs]

[Ruth] So dairy maids came up with an ingenious solution

to produce just the right shade of yellow.

We substitute the carotene that the cows would eat

in the grass with a good old fashioned carrot.

Just put a little bit and see what color.

Not very much, but there we go.

We don't want to overdo it.

[jaunty music]

We're now ready for the hard graft of making butter.

Now, if we've got everything absolutely perfect,

and the cream's top quality

and the temperatures are perfect,

we could expect this cream to turn in what?

20 minutes?

If it cools down a bit, half an hour,

but something like that, yes.

The cream needs to be shaken enough

so that the fat in it clumps together to make butter.

And if we've got it all wrong, we could be here.

Two hours plus.

[both laughing]

We'll take turns, go on, you get started.

Unlike a lot of jobs for women at the time,

dairy work was well paid,

but you had to have very strong shoulders and arms.

So shall I take over for a bit?

Yes, if you want to, that would be very good.

[Ruth] Using a much larger churn,

a really brawny dairy maid

could make 20 or 30 pounds of butter in one go.

Now let's just have a little look.

[Ruth] After churning until my arms ache,

I'm starting to realize what a difficult job

being a dairy maid would have been.

17 pints of milk yields only a pound of butter.

In my case, no butter at all.

So far, it's just really thick cream.

- [lilting music] - [churn clanking]

So we are hitting 2 1/2 hours and it's still not come.

I mean, this can happen, can't it?

If the weather's difficult, and the cold.

Sometimes it's the cream, but at this time of year

it's more likely to be the cold, yeah.

[Ruth] Despite butter being best kept in the fridge,

ideally it needs room temperature

for the fats to solidify.

So here in the freezing temperatures of the dairy,

we're having trouble.

It's very disappointing, but luckily

you had got a batch you'd already done.

- [Ingrid] Yes. - [both laughing]

[Ruth] Today, automatic churns

have almost entirely replaced the muscles of dairy maids.

But our love affair with creamy butter still continues.

[Gregg] Back at the dairy factory,

it's taken our milk just under 24 hours

to get into a bottle.

Now the bottles are put onto trolleys

and are heading for distribution

to our grocery shelf.

Now we've just packed up this milk

the other side of that wall, and traditionally

in this hall would have been hundreds of people,

but here they like to do things a little differently.

[upbeat techno music]

Here, futuristic robots like these, distribute milk.

In this custom built, enormous fridge,

75 state-of-the-art robots transport orders

from the filling zone to the dispatch bays

to send on to supermarkets nationwide.

They shift 1 1/2 million liters of milk per day,

enough to provide daily milk to Greater Manchester,

Somerset and the West Midlands combined.

I've never seen anything like this ever.

This looks nuts to me.

Dispatch Team Leader, Paul Ansell, is a robot expert.

Somebody is controlling these robots, aren't they?

I mean, they're not thinking for themselves?

It's not a human that controls the robots,

they're controlled by the warehouse management system

that's in the fridge.

When the milk comes through the door,

there's an RFID, a radio frequency identification number

that goes to each trolley and then the robots will move

or action them orders around the fridge.

You must have to be careful.

I mean, with robots running backwards and forwards,

you've got to be careful where you stand.

Not really, it's got the sensor in front.

The laser's always looking in front of it

at any given time.

[Gregg] I'm going to test out the robot's

laser beam collision avoidance device.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[machine whirring]

Ah! [laughs] That's just nuts.

You could actually take your robot for a walk.

Come on, come on, come on then.

Stop, good boy.

- [upbeat music] - [machine whirring]

And off she goes.

[Gregg] After 35 miles of work, these robots know

to automatically dock and charge their lithium batteries.

It goes and puts its feet up and has a cup of tea.

[Paul] It puts itself on charge.

If you didn't have the robots here, you'd need people.

How many people would you need?

Somewhere in the region of 300 people

in this fridge alone.

I've been in this business 18 years now.

So I started in a fridge, I effectively was a robot.

You have to think each trolley weighs about 240 kilos,

if you're doing that for a 12 hour shift,

it's very, very labor intensive.

So a robot never phones in sick.

No.

Never takes a tea break when he shouldn't be.

- No. - But you can't talk to the robot

about the football on a Monday morning.

You could try but you wouldn't get an answer back.

[Gregg] Robots haven't just taken control in this spectrum.

Out on the farms there is a robotic revolution going on.

[rousing music]

In the heart of the Lancashire countryside

is a scene that could be from science fiction.

On a dairy farm in Blackburn, the cows are in control.

[cow mooing]

This is a state-of-the-art Merlin.

[triumphant music]

An automatic, laser guided, milking robot.

Machines like these are being used

in about 5% of farms in the UK

and the cows can choose to use them whenever they want.

Chris Bargh's herd of 180 cows choose to milk themselves

three times a day, producing 5,000 liters.

[cows mooing]

The cows come in when they wanna be milked.

And they get milked by robots.

Yes, the cows actually come and milk themselves

whenever they want to be milked.

It's all robotic milking now.

It's absolutely amazing.

[Gregg] That cow can't wait to get in.

[Chris] Can't wait to get in, no.

So they're actually queuing up to get in there.

Yeah, no, they just come in and queue up whenever.

And the clever cows will look

to see which has the shortest queue.

[jaunty music]

[Gregg] With the cow in position,

it's time for the robot to get to work.

So you'll see now as the, the brushes come round,

and they go round and clean the teats.

Oh my word.

[Chris] And then you'll see the lasers start flashing

on the teats now.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so now it's pinpointing exactly

where them teats are.

Oh, it's go it.

Yeah, it's got it, it's got it, it's got it.

These robots are working 24 hours a day.

[Chris] They never stop, yeah.

[Gregg] The cows can be milked whenever they want.

[Chris] Yes.

[Gregg] So cows coming out now.

Anybody that's used the public transport in London

will recognize this, I think.

You put your ticket in, the barrier moves.

Now how does the robot know which cow it's got?

Every cow has a little ear tag

and a little transponder in its ear

and that's measured on the robot.

[Gregg] Chris's robots can record

almost every aspect of his herd,

from each cow's exact diet, to the amounts of fat,

protein and sugar in the milk.

When I was a lad, or still now you milking conventionally,

that always had to be sent away to a laboratory once a month

to be able to get that information.

Now every single time that cow's milked,

we know that information.

[bright music]

[Gregg] Merlin needs to be strong enough

to cope with the weight of a full size cow,

which can be as heavy as nine men,

but it also needs to be gentle enough for milking.

The robot can make tiny adjustments

to the squeeze on the cow's teat,

so it feels even gentler than a calf's mouth.

The first robots were introduced in the 90s,

but more recently the technology has advanced

and now about 30% of new milking systems

in the UK are robotic.

But what happens if it goes wrong?

If the same fault happened with three cows on the trot,

the whole robot shuts itself down

and rings my mobile phone to tell me there's a breakdown.

[Gregg] And the use of technology

goes way beyond milking.

It can even offer a calming back rub

to keep the cows contented.

Aren't we missing out here on the human interaction

between you, the farmer, and the cow?

We see the character of these cows so much more now,

because we're not forcing 'em.

[Gregg] Because humans aren't really telling them

to do anything.

They're relaxed and chilled.

We've had the robots in six years now,

and when we first put them in,

everyone was a little bit nervous.

Ooh, robotic milking the cows,

some of the older cows wouldn't change their ways.

80% of the herd have never seen a standard parlor,

they just assume that milking is done like this

and always has been.

Mate, I love this, I absolutely love this.

Well, listen, I'm not a farmer,

but they look pretty happy to me.

And they're wandering in of their own accord,

no doubt about that.

These cows want to be in there, they wanna be milked.

I can tell you that.

These are happy cows and the milk yields are up.

This could well be the future.

[cheerful upbeat music]

[Cherry] While Gregg has seen the future of milking,

I've come to a factory in Gloucester

to see how milk is turned

into one of the most decadent products of all.

This tanker contains 28 tons of milk.

And at this factory they get through

around six of them a week.

[cheerful upbeat music]

This factory is an ice cream lover's delight.

Brian Field is the quality assurance manager.

Why is milk so important to ice cream?

Milk is one of the fundamental ingredients

from which ice cream is made.

All our ice cream recipes use milk.

We use whole milk, we use cream,

we use concentrated milk and we use milk powder.

Brian takes me to where it all starts, the mix department.

Whoo, oh my goodness.

There's the ice cream mix.

That smells amazing.

[Brian] We add our milk, our sugar and our water,

blend it all together to make the ice cream mix.

Once that's done, we add some vanilla essence.

[Cherry] Each vat holds 4 tons of milk.

- There we go. - Perfect.

[Cherry] What will this become?

This will become Magnum.

- Really? - Yes.

- So this will contribute. - This is the center of Magnum.

[Cherry] This is my greatest dream.

I can't believe I'm at the center of an ice cream.

Once the ingredients are combined, they're pasteurized.

And then the mix makes its way to the factory floors.

Greg Barratt is the production labor manager.

From the mix department, the mix

is pumped over to these freezers.

And in these freezers it's almost whisked

like an egg to minus six.

[Cherry] At this point, a vital ingredient is added, air,

which, believe it or not, makes up half our ice cream.

And the more air, the softer the ice cream.

[Greg] As you can see there, the stick is put in it.

An ice cream at minus six degrees is quite pliable.

[Cherry] Oh, wow.

[Greg] As you can see by that.

So it's still very soft at this stage.

Yes, we've got to get it quickly hardened

into a hardening tunnel.

It then comes out the other side,

and it's that hard it's almost brittle.

[Cherry] In this hardening tunnel,

the ice creams are blast frozen.

This ultra fast freezing

creates tiny ice crystals in the mix.

The smaller the crystals,

the smoother the texture of the ice cream.

And as you can tell, it's very, very brittle.

I mean, it's rock hard.

Rock hard, yeah.

Absolutely rock hard.

Now we dip it in the chocolate.

But if the chocolate is hot, I presume.

Yes, it's plus 44 degrees.

Then when you dip that in, surely the ice cream will melt.

No, it won't melt because it's been in the hardening tunnel

for half an hour approximately at minus 40 degrees.

[Cherry] And now the ultimate ice cream experience,

the frozen vanilla ice cream is coated

in warm Belgian chocolate.

[whimsical music]

That may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

That is pure decadence.

Absolutely amazing.

[Cherry] The chocolate-coated ice creams are wrapped,

boxed and packed ready for cold storage and distribution.

To fulfill our boundless love of ice cream,

this factory runs 24/7, making 10 million Magnums

and five million Cornettos a week,

as well as many other lines

producing over 1.4 billion pieces of ice cream every year.

Not bad when you think the core ingredient is milk.

[upbeat music]

[Gregg] At the dairy factory distribution hall,

there is good news.

Robots haven't taken over completely

and Dispatch Manager, Mark Burrows, is showing me why.

If the customer is ordering anything other

than a full trolley, we then have to pick that by hand.

[Gregg] So let's say there's a 100 in there.

Yes.

If the supermarket orders 103, we have to pick up three.

We do, yeah.

Slip those over your ears.

[Gregg] I might have spoken too soon.

[Mark] Put this round your waist.

[Gregg] It looks like computers are in control after all.

[computer beeps]

[Computer] Talk now, say, "Ready."

[Gregg] As they're giving the orders.

[Mark] Just give it the command ready.

[Gregg] Ready.

[computer beeps]

[Computer] Scan destination.

Scan destination.

So you need to scan the RFID tag.

You'll hear it vibrate, so it knows exactly

what product's on that trolley now.

[computer bleeps]

[Computer] Material description, Asda four pint semi.

[Gregg] Asda four pint semi.

[Computer] Pick 60.

Pick 60, oh crying out loud.

Right, so I need 60 of those.

[quirky music]

This is hard work.

After my brief training, I am responsible

for getting the Weston-super-Mare order right.

[Computer] Material description, Cravendale two liters.

Cravendale two liter, four.

[Computer] Material description, organic semi.

[Gregg] Ready.

[Computer] Pick six.

Two pint.

[Computer] Pick 20.

I'm stuck. [laughs]

The milk I've just collected

needs help to get to the loading bay.

- Is that our robot? - [Mark] That's our robot, yeah.

[Gregg] Off to Weston-super-Mare.

Off to Weston-super-Mare.

Somebody's gonna get our milk tomorrow morning.

The milk I've just handpicked is about to be one

of the 400 deliveries made every day.

This is the last stage,

it's on its way to Weston-super-Mare.

It's gonna be on someone's breakfast cereal

tomorrow morning.

Come on, boys.

I have regularly walked into a shop

and just grabbed a bottle of milk,

whether it be the corner shop or the supermarket.

I've never even thought about where it comes from,

I just take it for granted it's going to be there

and it's going to be safe.

I've followed the milk now all the way from the cow,

all the way through every single process,

through all the testing, the bottling,

the unbelievable amount of people and technology

that goes in to making it possible

for me and you to grab a bottle of milk whenever we want.

Incredible story.

[cheerful upbeat music]