DDA warns consumers on risks of unprocessed milk

Milk consumers risk from suffering from cancer unless they abandon buying milk anyhow especially from the milk vendors.

The executive director for Diary Development Authority (DDA) Dr Jolly Zaribwende 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 killed yourself," Zaribwende warned. She said some milk vendors sell milk that is intoxicated with chemicals/drugs.

She also warned farmers who intentionally send their milk to the market when their cows are on treatment.

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

She was speaking at the celebrations to mark June, the dairy month at Kizinda playgrounds in Bushenyi district.

DDA and other milk processing factories distributed free processed milk and other milk products to some schools and health centres in the district. At the venue, residents lined up with containers to get free milk.

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

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

She further disclosed that selling of milk in litres will soon come to end by introducing selling of milk based on quality milk system. 

Zaribwende urged farmers to let their milk go to the existing processing factories.

Yorokamu Batuna a prominent dairy farmer appealed to DDA to sensitize parents about the need to give their children milk.

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

Zaribwende said they target to go to health facilities and schools to promote milk so that children grow up knowing the importance of milk.

She advised the prominent ageing dairy farmers to engage their children in farming so that when they are no more, their dairy farming enterprises don't end there.

Zaribwende expressed concern over how Bushenyi district has backslid in terms of dairy farming.

"It's high time you go back to dairy farming," she told the residents.