Second Dairy Revolution Gets Going With CMP Programme

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Hyderabad, Feb 15: : The Union government has decided to launch a second revolution to assist the dairy industry, called the ‘Clean Milk Production’ (CMP) programme across the country. The CMP programme was initiated by the Centre during last month under the guidance of the ministry of animal husbandry and the National Dairy Development Board.

The programme, planned with a proposed investment of Rs 30 crore, is aimed at creating awareness on the quality issues in the highly unorganised dairy sector.

Out of total amount, about 75 per cent will be contributed by the Centre and the remaining 25 per cent will be shared by any state government to assist about 600-odd processing units in the country processing milk from 10-100 litres a day.

While the Operation Flood programme concentrated on improving milk production in the country, the CMP programme focusses on clean milk or quality milk to be produced in the country and gear up to face the post-WTO regime and EU regulations, Mr Hemant Ogale, managing director, DeLaval Pvt Ltd told The Financial Express.

The company is one among the companies which is striving towards quality production and initiated the mechanised milking techniques.

Looking at the trend in the industry, he pointed out that although the milk production in the country was the highest producing about 80 million tonnes contributing about 16 per cent of world’s milk production of about 550 million tonne, the quality has remained absolutely nil compared to the international scenario.

While the EU has put in norms that the bacterial count in milk should be less than a lakh, Indian milk contains higher counts of as many as 10 lakh and the somatic cell count is in crores as against the prescribed 200,000, Mr Hemant said.

India has to take up concrete steps in the dairy industry to meet challenges more on quality. With a view to producing more quantity of milk, quality was neglected in the country, he said adding that there were also no quality norms prescribed for the total bacterial and cell count in milk. In order to take care of quality, first awareness has to be created among the milk farmers, who form about 75 per cent in the unorganised sector.

A joint training programme involving the cooperatives and farmers at the village levels should be introduced to educate the farmers of milking in a cleaner way.