Milk-and-Dairy-Products-in-Human-Nutrition-FAO

Chapter 9 – Human nutrition and dairy development: Trends and issues 369
livestock commodities. At the same time, like other livestock sectors, dairy faces
the challenges inherent in trying to provide a reliable and safe supply of food to
an ever-growing and urbanizing human population while dealing with increasing
pressure on natural resources and the environment. Development of the sector
could be left to market forces or guided by planned government strategies and
investment programmes. The most likely scenario is a combination of public and
private intervention.
As discussed previously, dairy-industry development programmes have rarely
set out with the explicit objective of raising the level of human nutrition; it is more
common that they have the objective of increasing the milk supply and providing
a livelihood to milk producers. Neither have commercial initiatives set out to raise
nutrition levels – they have aimed at selling milk and securing a solid production
base, with diversification into processed, probiotic and fortified products as a way
of expanding market share in many cases. Some projects and investments have
improved nutrition. Ownership of dairy animals in particular has been associated
with improved nutritional status (Chapter 7). It is yet to be defined precisely who
benefits most from dairy-industry development, or what types of development are
best suited to raising the nutritional status of the most vulnerable groups.
If the emphasis shifted and dairy-industry development was expected or required
to have a positive impact on nutrition, there would be implications for the way that
programmes are designed and government policies, aid programmes and private
investments are shaped. These are the subjects discussed in this section.
Much of what is said here is applicable within a wider food-security context and
to any livestock product. New international initiatives are recognizing the need for
coherence and collaboration (e.g. the Scaling Up Nutrition initiative [SUN, 2010]
and the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition). Nutrition-sensitive
dairy-industry development is likely to be more effective if it is applied in an environment
where there is high-level political commitment and improved nutrition is
generally promoted, and where intersectoral collaboration is already the norm.
9.3.1 Measuring nutritional impact
One of the first things that may be needed to increase the nutritional impact of dairyindustry
development, and that of other dairy programmes, is to measure more
accurately what impact is already resulting from the expansion of dairy production.
Casual observation suggests that programmes aimed at smallholder dairy production
increase consumption as well as wealth in the families who take part in them,
and that poor children who are beneficiaries of school milk programmes become
better nourished and have better physical development. Yet Chapters 4 and 7 in this
publication highlight the lack of systematic measurement and solid evidence, either
positive or negative, of the impact of dairy programmes on consumption or dietary
choices. Even less seems to have been published about the impact of private-sector
investment on nutrition. The evidence linking dairy programmes and projects with
health, although encouraging, is also inconclusive.
To improve the evidence base linking dairying and nutrition, the first task is to
define the evidence that is needed to answer the following questions:
• As a result of the programme, project or initiative, do more people consume
dairy products than before