Victory for common sense

It was World Milk Day last Saturday, and Ireland’s dairy industry was able to celebrate in advance ahead of this week’s confirmation that cheese is exempted from new broadcasting rules which will ban some foods from being advertised to children.

Our Department of Health and food safety agencies recommend three to five portions of dairy products a day for children and teenagers.

A portion of dairy products offers a unique, high nutritional value for low environmental cost of production.

Milk, yoghurt, and cheese offer bioavailable calcium, important for bone health, and protein, important for maintenance of muscle mass.

Cheese and yoghurts are centuries old foods.

Cheese contributes high-quality protein as well as calcium, phosphorus and vitamin A to the diet.

Yoghurts and other traditionally fermented milk drinks, such as butter milk, have always been valued for their role in gut health, now augmented by the addition of beneficial probiotics and prebiotics.

So it came as a major shock to the industry when the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland targeted cheese.

The food industry fought back, and has now welcomed what IFA dairy chairman Kevin Kiersey called “a victory for common sense”.

All in the dairy industry agree with him that cheese should not be treated in the same way for broadcast advertising purposes as confectionery, crisps, or sugary soft drinks, and that it is not less healthy than diet cola.

It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say the Government’s target of 50% growth for our dairy sector could have been endangered if cheese advertising to children was banned on Irish TV.

This would have been pounced on by Ireland’s rivals, who are chasing their share of the 20% or more global increase in consumption of dairy products predicted by 2021.

In an industry where even the raw milk produced across the world is valued annually at about €220bn, the marketing messages directed against Ireland by less scrupulous rivals, if Ireland banned cheese advertising to children, do not bear thinking about.

What would people in the countries that get an estimated 15% of the global supply of infant milk formula from Ireland make of such messages?

As Ireland sets out on the hard road to increase our annual dairy exports of €2.6bn, the industry will hope there will be no more own goals.