At the State Council executive meeting held on May 23, Premier Li Keqiang demanded that quality and safety should be stressed to boost the dairy industry.

The Premier said, “We should accelerate the growth of the dairy industry, which must gain trust of customers and the market. The most important thing is quality and safety.”

“We should make efforts to significantly improve the quality and reputation of domestic infant formula in three years, rebuild people’s trust toward domestic dairy products, and improve the competitiveness,” he added.

The industrial analysis report shows that the melamine-tainted baby formula incident which happened 10 years ago still has impact on domestic milk powder industry. For many families, especially those in large and medium cities, imported baby formula is still their first choice.

“To revitalize the dairy industry, we need to change people’s bad impression, and guarantee the quality of baby formula,” Premier Li said.

According to data, China ranked third in the world for both output and consumption of dairy products in 2017, but the annual consumption per capita was just one third of the world average. There is still huge potential to develop the industry.

“We should learn advanced technologies and management experience from the world dairy giants, thus forcing domestic industry to transform and upgrade,” said the Premier.

“Governments at all levels should provide necessary support and supervision,” he added.

The meeting decided to adopt three measures to boost the dairy industry. First, to introduce cows of fine breeds to build national breeding farms; to grow more fodder grass; to develop standardized scale breeding and build bases of high-quality sources of raw milk.

Second, to enhance quality supervision and increase national standards for raw milk and sterilized milk; to establish a quality tracking system for the whole production process.

Third, to provide support for finance and insurance, as well as land for raising dairy stock.

“The prosperity of dairy industry concerns children’s health and the future of a strong nation, so all authorities should make great efforts to solve this issue of vital importance,” the Premier added.