Milk Campaign in Indonesia

Around 200 mothers, members of the Family Welfare Movement from all over Jakarta, attended an educational seminar on nutrition held in Jakarta on Thursday, November 20, 2008.

The event was held as part of the 2008 milk campaign, a joint effort of Tetra Pak Indonesia, the Health Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry to boost milk consumption.

"Milk consumption in Indonesia is still very low, an average of 9 liters per person per year," a director general at the Agriculture Ministry Chairul Rachman said.

"But milk is more accessible for people; we rarely see people who are allergic to milk compared with other kinds of food allergy," Chairul said.

Although milk consumption in Indonesia is still very low, new efforts have been made to grow this healthy habit, both by government and NGO in the education and health sectors.

Average annual milk consumption in Indonesia was only seven liters per person by the end of 2003, compared to Malaysia's 20 and Thailand's 21.

Indonesia's annual average milk consumption level increased slightly from only 5.10 liters per person in l998 (when the country was being hit hard by the economic crisis) to seven liters by the end of 2003.

Indonesia lagged behind other nations in terms of consumption of milk and nutritious foods such as meat, eggs and other protein-rich items.

The people's nutritional status has been low, if not poor, over the last four decades.

In l970, average annual milk consumption was only 1.82 liters per capita. Ten years later, it had increased to 4.36 liters, and soared to 6.99 in 1995. It dropped back sharply to 5.10 liters in l998.

During the economic crisis in 1997 and l998, Indonesians consumed on average half a glass of milk per week, one egg and two slices of meat.

This illustrates how poor our people's nutrition is. We cannot expect to excel as a well-fed nation when our consumption of protein-rich food and beverages is so low.

Nutrition programs in developed countries have always included milk as part of food supplement programs. School students in the United States receive free milk as part of the country's Special Milk program.

Infants, toddlers and pregnant women, especially those from low-income families, received 15 liters of milk a month.

In Indonesia, the United States Department of Agriculture has supported Indonesia's milk program by distributing free milk and soybean milk to 465,673 school students across the country between l999 and 2000.