The government in Jamaica has plans to revive its local dairy industry and is going ahead with a dairy development board.

Jamaica’s agriculture minister Roger Clarke defended the government’s planned revival of the local dairy industry. The government also rejected a recommendation from Lasco Foods Limited against the establishment of a dairy development board, which it claims will increase prices.
Lasco Foods had made the recommendation in a submission to Parliament’s joint select committee examining legislation to create a dairy board to regulate the industry. In the written submission, Patrick Lawrence, group managing director at Lasco Foods, discouraged the Government from going that route and said the establishment of such a board would place “crippling pressures on the industry” and would see its demise.
However, says Clarke, “We are dependent solely on imported milk … it might be cheap now but when our industry is totally destroyed that cheap milk powder will not be around.”
The threat of a shortage of affordable milk products was evident during Hurricane Ivan which struck the island in 2004, Clarke further notes. “Hurricane Ivan came and we did not have them, nothing came in cheap. Things moved up astronomically and therefore what we are about is not just to protect the dairy food industry, we are trying to find a way to sell some milk and produce some milk efficiently.”
Lawrence notes in response: “Lasco currently pays 50 per cent duty on the importation of milk powder and applies a mark-up of 10.3 per cent.” Anything more would make the product unmarketable and would remove it from the hands of the people who need it most, the company says.