Bridging the Regulatory Gap for Small-scale Milk Traders

Traditional milk markets supply over 80% of marketed milk in Kenya. The same smallholder dominance is seen in other countries of the South, such as Tanzania (98%), Nicaragua (86%) and India (83%) - now the largest dairy producer in the world.

Although most milk marketed in Kenya passes through informal market channels, government policies do not adequately meet the concerns of the small farmers, traders and poor consumers who make up these channels. Informal markets sell cheaper milk for poor consumers, satisfy traditional tastes and offer better prices for milk producers. Public officials, however, tend to adopt international food-quality-assurance standards. These Western models of dairy development have actively discouraged small milk market agents and have often led to lower quality products delivered to consumers.

Research conducted by the Smallholder Dairy Project (SDP), a research and development project conducted jointly by the Kenya Ministry of Livestock Development, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), set out to answer two questions: Can policy and technology can help bridge the gap between regulated and unregulated markets? Can training and licensing rather than policing can be offered to improve milk safety in traditional markets?

This SDP meets the need of the Kenyan dairy development authorities for science-based information. The information produced by the project is providing the authorities with a sound basis on which to develop equitable and locally derived food-safety-assurance regulations and standards. The project focuses on changing mind-sets as well as written policy. It is disseminating facts about the health risks of the 'raw' milk market (generated in a collaborative risk analysis project) and conducting training courses in the use of appropriate milk handling methods and certification procedures. The project worked with small milk traders to develop a new milk can that meets their specific milk-handling needs. The project is also completing training guidelines to help small traders become licensed.

The SDP has already helped provoke changes in the policy environment regarding raw milk marketing. It is now widely accepted by stakeholders that most milk in Kenya will continue for some time to be marketed and consumed without having first been industrially pasteurised. Acceptance of this fact is reflected in both Kenya's new Dairy Development Policy and its revised Dairy Bill, which explicitly recognise the predominance of the raw milk trade and provide institutional guidelines supportive of the small-scale production and marketing of milk. Once this Bill is passed (expected by the end of 2004), the regulatory authority collaborating in the project will consider training and certifying market agents who currently do not qualify to receive trading licenses on the basis of poor hygiene. Besides traders, this project is benefiting an estimated one million poor producers, who gain greater access to milk markets, and poor consumers, who gain access to more hygienic milk sold at more competitive prices.

Members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which support ILRI, played a critical role in the pro-poor transformation of Kenya's dairy policies through ILRI's Market-oriented Smallholder Dairy (MOSD) Project, which helped the collaborative SDP design research studies, assessed technical impacts, analysed risks, and provided strategic lessons learnt through participation in similar projects in other developing countries.

A key message of the MOSD for several years now has been that dairy development in the South needs to focus on raising the welfare of small-scale farmers and market agents, and meeting the needs of poor consumers rather than striving to adopt Western dairy models. Evidence the MOSD has gathered indicates that this approach promises greater benefits to the poor without compromising consumer health (most of the unpasteurised milk sold in Kenya is boiled before it is consumed) or formal dairy development (important for Kenya's development of export markets).

This SDP is funded by the UK Department for International Development. The University of Nairobi and the Kenya Medical Research Institute undertook intensive research lasting two years to provide the required risk information. Following the conclusion of that collaborative risk analysis in 2001, the SDP invited the official regulator, the Kenya Dairy Board, as well as the Ministry of Health and an international dairy development NGO Land O'Lakes, to engage with them in discussions with small traders of potential solutions to the problems they face, such as frequent milk spoilage and official harassment. With additional funding from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, these partners provided the milk traders with training in milk handling. In a participatory manner with the traders they developed a new milk container, produced by a local manufacturer, that meets the needs of small traders. The partners measured the impacts of the training and the use of the newly fabricated milk-handling containers. Land O'Lakes and the Kenya Dairy Board are using the lessons learnt and outputs of this exercise for greater outreach to Kenya's dairy smallholders.

Kenya's small milk traders are enthusiastically participating in this Project. They are attending training sessions, purchasing new milk cans and helping to develop new training guidelines. National programmes are being designed to train and license the traders using these guidelines once current regulatory bottlenecks are removed. The Kenya Dairy Board, which will be the main player in this exercise, has already responded by forming a Dairy Public Health Advisory Committee that incorporates public-sector representatives and industrial processors to oversee the implementation of this activity and various other options to improve milk quality. Land O'Lakes co-funds activities to test innovations in the field.

The beneficiaries of the innovative collaborative work of the SDP are Kenya's many small entrepreneur milk traders whose businesses are hurt by inappropriate regulations and whose voices have not been heard before. Through their participation in this Project, the traders are organising themselves for the first time to influence dairy policies. They know now they have the ability to speak up and be heard and that they are now recognised by national policy makers as the very backbone of Kenya's thriving dairy sector.