FrieslandCampina Engro Pakistan Ltd (FCEPL) in collaboration with the University of Education, Punjab launched a ‘School Milk Program’ (SMP) in a ceremony held at a local hotel today.Minister of Higher Education Punjab, Raja Yasir Humayun Sarfraz was the chief guest for the occasion. The School Milk Program ceremony was also graced by Minister for Livestock, Sardar Hasnain Bahadar Dreshak.Managing Director FrieslandCampina Mr Ali Ahmed Khan in his message on the successful launch of School Milk Program said ” It is a great pleasure to highlight that we at FCEPL are celebrating 2021 as 150th year of our creation taking ahead our steadfast legacy of ensuring better nourishment. We will continue this magnanimous journey in line with our strong commitment and vision of providing a better livelihood for our farmers and serving the customers with excellence across the board.Ali Ahmed added that “FrieslandCampina, being cooperative of Dairy Farmers has unique purpose of “nourishing by nature” and this purpose has three predominant elements including a better nutrition, an adequate living standard good for farmers and lastly for now and generations to come.”“Nutrition is at the core of our purpose, henceforth, we are taking several initiatives in nutrition landscape with efficiency and refinement in the technological system”, Ali Ahmed said further.
It is our primary responsibility to bring into limelight the dire consequences of raw milk consumption among children and for this we have undertaken many projects for improving farmers livelihoods through productivity enhancement and we are focusing even more in future on our dairy development initiatives.Similarly, School Milk Program is also one of our priority areas in countries like Pakistan. While milk consumption in schools has multitude of benefits for the school children, it has other leg of benefits including farmers selling more, industry growth, employment generation to a higher level.Keeping this in mind, we are partnering with UE to pilot the program for 6 months to start with by increasing learnings in terms of nutrition improvement and school performance, will be shared with the government and relevant stakeholders for potential large scale roll out.”The SMP event was graced by the patrons of Pakistan’s various educational institutions, all of whom are ardent advocates of the health and dietary needs of the country’s substantial student population.Dr. Muhammad Nasir, G.M. Scientific & Regulatory Affairs, FCEPL said ‘’We are partnering with the government and other stakeholders to launch this much needed initiative of the School Milk Program, which will help to improve the nutritional status and health of kids and is also expected to improve their educational performance indicators.”Dr Nasir said further that the launch of the SMP is scheduled to be the first of many other empowering and quality-of-life enhancing entities aimed at the health and nutritional needs of every Pakistani, in line with the vision of Prime Minister, Imran Khan. With the slogan of “Nourishing the future” the children of the nation can expect many other similarly empowering initiatives scheduled along the year.
