Raise your glass to goodness

For all it provides us with, from inside our kitchens and out to our communities, we can all agree that milk has truly earned its moniker “white gold.” 

Milk, in our culture and many others in the world, is a vital food component in supplementing nutritional needs, supporting food security, and providing livelihood, as well as complementing our own culinary endeavors. 

Recently we commemorated World Milk Day, where we got a closer look at the milk and dairy industry. It’s a day to give special attention to the myriad of benefits of dairy that we enjoy as a community, and what other opportunities remain that we can tap into. Yours truly was given the chance to be between the leading voices of our local milk and dairy industry, as the moderator of a forum for World Milk Day, hosted by our friends at Alaska Milk Corp. (AMC).

It was a blessing to meet and listen to people who shared my concern for raising the quality of health and nutrition of our fellow Filipinos. Just the same was their commitment to developing our local dairy industry, for the sake of our farmers and the quality of milk the Philippines could produce.

We were joined by leaders and experts from the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Education (DepEd), and the National Dairy Authority (NDA), as well as from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). The stellar roster of our forum, I believe, illustrated how essential milk is to our community, as we find that we have stakeholders across different sectors.

OIC-Administrator Atty. Gavino Alfredo C. Benitez, in his keynote speech, pointed out that dairy farming supports thousands of Filipino families by “providing a stable source of income and fostering rural development. At the National Dairy Authority, we have witnessed firsthand the improvement in the livelihoods of dairy farmers once their trade becomes profitable.”

“The milk-feeding programs of the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) provide a steady market for our local dairy farmers,” Atty. Gavino noted.

The DepEd program mentioned by Atty. Gavino is the school-based feeding program for young learners in kindergarten to