'That cheap milk will kill you'

BUSHENYI - Milk consumers risk getting cancer if they continue drinking infected unprocessed milk, especially that from local milk vendors.

This was a warning call by the executive director of Diary Development Authority (DDA) Dr Jolly Zaribwende.

She said cancer, tuberculosis, brucella are among the diseases associated with taking infected milk.

"You think you have bought cheap milk from the milk vendors when you have instead killed yourself."

Some milk vendors sell milk that is intoxicated with chemicals or drugs, she told locals during celebrations to mark June Dairy Month - held to promote drinking milk - at Kizinda grounds in Bushenyi district.

Zaribwende warned farmers who deliberately sale their milk to the market when their cows are on treatment.

"Stop buying milk from vendors because you don't know its source," she warned residents.

AT the event, DDA and other milk-processing factories distributed free processed milk and other milk products to locals, schools and district health centres in the district.

Zaribwende said they are working on a program to support farmers to begin processing their milk at the farm level.

"We want to skill the youth about value addition especially how to make things like yoghurt and we hope that will end the selling of raw milk."

Also, the selling of milk in litres will soon come to end with the introduction of selling of milk based on quality, she revealed, further urging farmers to send their milk to existing processing factories.

Meanwhile, Yorokamu Batuna, who is a prominent dairy farmer, called for the sensitization of parents on the need to give their children milk regularly.

"The rate of milk intake is still very low, a reason we still have many cases of malnutrition."

DDA plans to take their milk consumption campaign to schools and health facilities.