The core work of Global Dairy Platform will fall into the three key areas: creating a sound scientific platform to promote and defend milk and dairy; ensuring that regulation does not create unwarranted market barriers to growth; and promoting core messages about milk and dairy as nutrient-dense healthy foods with existing and new consumers.

In some areas this can be done by supporting existing work, while in others it may be necessary to start whole new projects to achieve the objectives. At the annual meeting this year, we started to articulate how we might begin to make progress in some of these areas.

Based on the advice of the Communication and Scientific Advisory Board, GDP is focused on four headline objectives:

• That integrity and trust in milk and dairy increases amongst the world’s consumers
• That milk and dairy becomes linked to weight loss and weight management in the consumer’s mind
• That milk is viewed as essential at all stages of life
• That regulation does not create unwarranted barriers to the consumption of dairy

Potential New Projects

We have had clear feedback that we need to promote positive messages. Hence, there are three positive objectives and one that defends the dairy industry against over-regulation. At the meeting, we suggested some potential projects to accomplish some of these, including:

• Continuing to look at how we might achieve a balanced view of milkfat in the consumer’s mind.
• Creating a common consumer analysis model across markets to suggest where use of common messages and shared resources might be most effective.
• Looking how we might use existing legislation to protect dairy terms from use by alternative “competitive” products.
• Researching how to establish the mechanism by which milk and dairy consumption is beneficial to weight management.
• Supporting school milk activities around the world.
• Working to establish the role that dairy might have in reducing hypertension.
• Establishing an understanding of the effects of increasing dairy consumption in economic terms by improved health across populations.

It is important to now get feedback on these issues to ensure that the work that we are carrying out will be of maximum benefit to our members.

What Are GDP’s Priorities?

To help in the planning, please prioritise the above projects by taking the following brief survey.

Click here to take the GDP Priorities survey

Thank you for your help and cooperation!