US has milk moustached celebs, PH has OPM

BAGUIO CITY—The United States made Hollywood celebrities and athletes wear milk “moustache” to popularize drinking milk in America several years ago, through its successful “Got Milk?” campaign.

The Philippine dairy industry hopes to equal the American campaign by reworking the popular acronym OPM (Original Pilipino Music), to stand for “Original Pilipino Milk,” experts said at the 15th Dairy Congress held here.

OPM is also a national quality standard for fresh milk and Philippine milk products, which the Department of Agriculture drew up in 2001.

Danilo Fausto, chair of the Dairy Confederation of the Philippines, said OPM hopes to increase domestic consumption of fresh locally produced milk and reduce the importation of foreign milk, which makes up 99 percent of milk products in groceries in the country.

But the government has suspended the enforcement of OPM on a national scale, pending industry tests that would determine the quality of local fresh milk and milk products that the industry and the government would soon market, said Grace Cenas, administrator of the National Dairy Authority (NDA).

“We need to achieve a high confidence level in the products as to quality,” Cenas said.

She said popularizing OPM prematurely would impact on the trade if big and small players do not agree on a uniform quality prescription.

Making OPM, and by extension Filipino milk, a mainstream consumer brand is key to improving local dairy farm production, which is one of the desired outputs of a comprehensive development plan for Philippine agriculture called Agriculture and Fisheries 2025, Fausto said.

“The plan is an honest attempt to develop the agriculture sector, by defining what is the state of agriculture today and where we wish to bring it in 25 years,” he said.

Fausto said the plan intends to achieve the following: ensure that the average age of farmers should be 37 by 2025 instead of the current average age of 67; farmers and fishermen should be above the poverty threshold; public investment should have doubled by 2025, and 8 million hectares of denuded forest should already be used to produce food by that year.

He said the plan also expects the agriculture sector to be a net exporter and not a net importer by 2025.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, in a speech read for him by Dr. Ernesto Santos on Wednesday at the congress’ opening, said: “We should aim not just for self-sufficiency but also for an incredible chance for export.”

New Zealand Ambassador to the Philippines Reuben Levermore said demand was expected to grow.

Levermore said that by 2020, milk-producing countries like New Zealand expect that 100 billion liters of milk would be consumed, and part of the demand would be supplied by emerging milk markets.

He said the Philippines should strive to reach that target.

Fausto said upgraded research and development and improved market studies would help the industry build “dairy enterprises that are owned and managed by dairy cooperatives and dairy federations in their respective dairy zones.”  Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon