European Council Backs Improvements to School Milk Scheme and Simplifications to Dairy Market 

27/09/07 European Union agriculture ministers approved a package of measures to improve the management of the dairy sector, including a major improvement in the school milk scheme. This will set a single aid rate for all categories of milk distributed in schools. The previous scheme gave a higher rate of aid for milk with a higher fat content. This is no longer appropriate in an age when obesity is becoming a major public health problem, with the need to reduce the consumption of fat in dairy products, not least among schoolchildren. With the standard rate independent of the fat content, the EU will de facto in the future promote the consumption of low fat dairy products among schoolchildren. Other changes adopted today will go a long way towards simplifying the Common Market Organisation for milk and dairy products. They include a liberalisation of the drinking milk market to allow the retail sale of milk with different fat contents. The existing categories (whole fat, semi-skimmed and skimmed milk) will continue to exist. But it will be possible in future to market milk with other fat contents as long as the fat content is clearly marked on the packaging. Other modifications foreseen concern private storage, butter intervention, import licences, and the standardisation of the rate of proteins in preserved milk.

Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, said: "I am very pleased we have been able to introduce a single rate of aid for the school milk programme and to increase the level of aid. This will allow us to reflect changing consumer preferences and will simplify the management of the scheme at national level. Teaching children to consume healthy and preferably low fat content dairy products at an early age is an important part of helping them to develop healthy habits. The rest of this package represents a major contribution to our ongoing efforts to simplify the workings of the Common Agricultural Policy."

As the current scheme is complicated and cumbersome and no longer meets nutritional habits in a number of Member States, there will be a single rate of aid, irrespective of the fat content of milk delivered to pupils. The aid rate will be €18.15/100kg for all categories of milk. Schools may choose what sort of milk to provide.

The current regulation provides that only three categories of drinking milk may be produced and marketed in the Community:
• skimmed milk (0.5% fat or less),
• semi-skimmed milk (between 1.5% and 1.8% fat)
• whole milk (3.5% fat or more).

In order to respond to changing nutritional habits (tendency towards consumption of dairy products with less milk fat), and to encourage the production of agricultural products which are demanded by the market, the production and marketing in the EU of milk with fat contents outside the three abovementioned categories will be allowed. This will be on condition that clear and readable information on the fat content is provided on the label. The three existing categories will continue to exist.

The EU dairy industry and exporters of milk powders and condensed milk have for a long time requested a modification of the rules on protein contents in such products to put them in line with international standards (Codex) allowing standardisation to a minimum content of 34% expressed in fat free dry matter. At the moment the natural protein content in milk powder ranges from 31% to 37%. The agreement will allow EU producers to be on an equal footing with their competitors from outside Europe who produce according to those Codex standards and who have until now enjoyed a relative economic advantage over EU producers.

To eliminate the administrative burden brought about by the opening and suspension of butter intervention, which depends on the market price recorded in each individual Member State, the Intervention agencies will simply be able to buy butter at 90% of the intervention price from 1 March to 31 August or until the overall Community ceiling has been reached.

As aid for private storage of cream or skimmed milk powder has not in practice been used in the past by operators as support for the dairy market, the two measures are obsolete and will be removed from the basic dairy Regulation.

For the purpose of certain Community market measures, the 27 national quality classes for butter will be replaced with a single quality definition.

The compulsory use of the system of import licences is no longer necessary as in some cases more appropriate systems (e.g. the DG TAXUD monitoring system) exist.