Milk Plant To Help Starving Children

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 5

Milk Plant To Help Starving Children

OLUN J ARY collectors will call on every household in New Zealand today in C.0.R.5.0.’s annual appeal for funds to help feed the millions of hungry people in under-developed countries.

I his year C.0.R.5.0. hopes to raise £500.000 to finance its projects, one of which is a milk-conversation scheme to reduce malnutrition among children and fight famine in Tanzania, the country formerly known as Tanganyika.

New Zealanders have given £60,000 through the Freedom-From-Hunger campaign to help finance the scheme. C.0.R.5.0.’s national secretary (the Rev. H. C. Dixon) says the scheme will do much to improve the health of the people in Northern Tanzania by countering the protein deficiency diseases to which the African people are prone and from which thousands of African children have died in the last 10 years. The scheme will raise the standard of living of the rural populations by creating an assured outlet for milk

production, as well as a stock-pile of food supplies for Tanzania as a whole—a vital factor in a country of frequent famines. “The disastrous failure of the rains four years ago in East Africa, coupled with a s- plague of army worms ); destroying grass, grain and o ■ other crops, resulted in h widespread food shortages in n[Tanzania,” Mr Dixon said, el “Food supplies were des[pleted in district after dise | trict and, finally. were h | exhausted. Heavy rains and I- disastrous floods followed. 0 The worst famine in nearly a decade threatened large e areas of the country, and e I thousands of men, women gland children slowly starved, k “Unlike a tornado or an

earthquake, famine is a protracted disaster. Death from starvation can usually be averted by emergency relief measures, but the effects of famine are long-lived. Undernutrition and malnutrition may so undermine the strength of a community that the harvest lies ungathered, leading to further food shortages. This happened in Tanzania. First To Suffer “Children were the first to suffer, because of their special nutritional requirements for growth and because milk supplies in Tanzania are totally inadequate. “For children milk is one of the most important of all foods. Tanzania’s staple diet of bananas cooked with maize and other cereals is not enough to build bodily resistance to protein-deficiency diseases and many young children have died. “The United Nations Children’s Fund and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations planned to overcome the shortage of protein in Tanzania by establishing in the Arusha area, at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the Northern Province, a milk collection, processing and distribution scheme, which would ensure not only the proper organisation of the

area’s dairying resources, but a free distribution of good, safe, pasteurised milk to all schools, and also to all homes with children and expectant mothers. “It is this scheme to which New Zealanders have contributed £60.000 in donations through C.0.R.5.0. to the Freedom-from-Hunger Campaign. The money has been spent on equipping a modern dairy factory at Arusha. The factory will handle about 9000 gallons of milk daily. Our money paid for equipment for pasteurising bottled and bulk milk, butter-making, cheese-making, toning the milk, sour milk and ghee. “The scheme will also enable a dairy in Moshi, a town about 50 miles away, to handle 3000 gallons of milk daily in bottles and bulk. There will be five distributing depots. “Included in the scheme is a training centre at Tengeru at which all branches of dairying will be taught. It is the first training centre of its kind in Tanzania and the instruction given should have incalculable benefit for the whole country.” > Training Manager Mr Dixon said a New Zealander, Mr L. A. Chivers, of Auckland, had been appointed manager of the dairy factory at Arusha. His appointment was made under the Special - Commonwealth Aid to Africa . Programme. Mr Chivers’ place would later be taken by I a Tanzanian.

“After being trained at the Tengeru centre, this young Tanzanian will be brought to New Zealand for further training before taking up his appointment as manager of the Arusha dairy factory,” Mr Dixon said. “New Zealand will thus have made a major contribution to the establishment and growth of a great new dairy industry, one that will help this developing country the better to help itself. “The whole object of the Freedom-From-Hunger campaign is to enable the developing countries to raise their standard of living by their own exertions. But first, we must give them a helping hand by raising campaign funds.