Responsible diets essential for solving poverty

Providing responsible nutrition is key to solving global poverty. It was with these words that Gerda Verburg opened the International Dairy Federation World Dairy Summit 2016 in Rotterdam. Verburg is the Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, an international United Nations network which is tackling malnutrition around the world.

According to Verburg, the dairy sector can play a key role in realizing the targets set by the United Nations to make the world more sustainable. Dairy products, in her opinion, are thus part of the solution.

More than 1000 representatives from the dairy industry, government and science have come together for the world dairy conference. With leading representatives of social organizations, they will discuss the challenges that the dairy sector faces in its work to contribute to sustainable diets for the growing global population. “We are convinced that dairy will play an important part in this in the coming years,” says Jan Maarten Vrij, chair of the organizational committee. “In the Netherlands, we are aware that the dairy sector can only fulfill this role in close cooperation with the international community, including governments and social organizations.”

During the closing session of the conference on Wednesday, October 19, the “Declaration of Rotterdam” will be signed. This declaration will commit the international dairy sector to the United Nations’ sustainability targets.