THORNBURY has been at the heart of a nationwide education initiative to show consumers - paticularly children - that milk isn't already in the bottle when it leaves the cow.

Local dairy farmer Richard Cornock was on hand at the town's Tesco store this week to impart some facts about the white stuff to youngsters - and emphasise the importance of being nice to udders!

Richard and his brother Tom are stars of the Localchoice milk scheme, which enables shoppers to buy milk produced in the area where they live and to support smaller family farms which might otherwise struggle to balance the books.

Their dairy operation at New House Farm in Tytherington - where the Cornock family has been farming since the 1840s - is one of a select number of producers across the UK chosen to take part in the scheme.

The Thornbury store is now top of the league across the country in local milk sales and Richard and Tom are set to be featured in the Tesco Clubcard magazine.

"Localchoice has taken off really well and more people now know about us and what we are doing," said Richard Cornock.

"It's good to be able to link our farm with the local community. People can put the milk on their cornflakes in the morning and drive past the cows that produced it on the way to work."

He said it was important that people of all ages - but especially children - should understand the facts about milk production.

"All too often there's a huge disconnect between what people eat and their knowledge of its origin or how it's produced," he said.

Recent research by Dairy Farmers of Britain as part of its Grass is Greener campaign revealed that almost one in 10 young people aged eight to 15 believed that if a cow ate grass, the milk it produced would no longer be white. And more than one in three of those actually thought it would be green!

Farmers who supply Localchoice milk through cooperative Dairy Farmers of Britain get a fairer price, ensuring a better standard of living for themselves and their cattle.

The Cornock brothers' dairy operation - they have 100 Freisian cows and employ low-intensity methods - had to meet strict criteria and is one of three in the Thornbury area and five across the whole of Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire selected to take part in the Localchoice scheme.