Numerous organizations have realized the urgent need to fight for an inclusive sectorial policy favoring the weak and guaranteeing national food security.

 

On August 3, 2008, Andrés Felipe Arias (former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Colombia), in an effort to stigmatize 50 percent of the milk sold through “informal channels,” and which according to him is “poison,” asked audiences in a televised conference, “What am I going to give my baby?”

 

Similarly, on November 28, 2010, at the Fedegan (Colombian Federation of Cattle Ranchers) congress, current Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo noted that “informality” is the leading “bottleneck” in the dairy chain. Both these authorities, then, point to the same culprit of the sector’s troubles.

 

FAO, instead, says Colombia is no exception to a global problem of “producers vulnerable” to actions of large industry.

 

One out of every two cattle ranchers has less than ten heads of cattle. Each cow gives an average of five liters of milk a day. A significant proportion of women from rural households work to supplement their family’s income. The majority of the animals raised are not meant specifically either for meat or milk production, and rather serve a “double purpose.” This limits the number of herds that are large enough to meet global standards, as is required by the local technocracy. To complicate the situation even more, 85 percent of all pasteurized milk production is controlled by an oligopoly.

 

Colombia, Brazil, or India – they all have other channels, with small-scale suppliers, low-income consumers, and small byproduct companies. But this segment of the market is under fire from large companies.

 

 The government, acting in collusion with large business, has issued decrees banning the sale of raw milk, despite the fact that the WHO has declared that, when boiled, raw milk is perfectly healthy food. The government has also accepted the inclusion of dairy chapters in six FTAs to allow the subsidiaries of these companies to import milk into a domestic market that is self-sufficient.

 

It turns a blind eye on stores and supermarkets that sell dairy beverages made from milk whey and other deceptive industrial products that lack any real nutrients and prey on the good faith of consumers. More seriously still, it enables companies to pay producers below official prices, as is happening today, when at this point in 2011 prices have yet to be adjusted.

 

A legacy left by Arias that Restrepo is continuing.

 

Through the above and other means, neoliberal interests are aiming to replace a significant portion of domestic dairy production with foreign milk. The industry lacks the capacity to process the 6.5 billion liters produced per year, so what will happen when a percentage of milk production is banned as of March 10? Where will the processed milk to replace it come from?

 

Numerous organizations have understood the urgent need to demand an inclusive sectorial policy favoring the weak and guaranteeing national food security, and have joined forces to oppose this “public-private” alliance that plans to turn the country into just another conquest in the quest of the powerful for a “new dairy world.”

 

It will be a tight struggle, starting today, March 9.