Chinese Drinking More Milk

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 8

Chinese Drinking More Milk

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter)

PEKING. About a quarter of Peking’s 6 million inhabitants now get milk on regular home delivery rounds, according to the latest official report on the capital’s dairy industry.

No figures for total consumption of dairy products were available, but the report said that 18 times more fresh milk was drunk in Peking every day now than in 1949, when the Communists came to power in China. Milk was now on sale at 500 cold drink stands and food shops.

This represented a modest increase over figures issued in May last year, when the drink-more-milk drive was given new impetus by price cuts of up to 30 per cent on dairy products. Fresh milk consumption was then put at 16 times more than in 1949 and about 180,000 families, roughly onesixth of the population, were said to be buying milk regularly. In addition to fresh milk, most foodshops stock powdered and condensed milk, butter, cheese and yoghurt, as well as ice-cream. These items were not part of the traditional Chinese diet and had only been on sale in Peking in large quantities for about three years. In most parts of China, the chief role of cattle was to draw ploughs or carts, though in this area of the north, communes were breeding more and more dairy cows. The report said that there

were now 30,000 dairy cows on farms in the outskirts of the capital, compared with 1100 in 1949. Part of Peking s growing output of highquality powdered milk began to be exported this year, it said.