TARIK TEZEL: OUR MILK IS HEALTHY BUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE IS DIRTY

Turkey Milk, Meat, Food Industrialists and Producers Association (SETBİR) Chairman Tarık Tezel said: "It is necessary to increase the number of animals in order to meet the animal protein needs of our population."

Tarık Tezel explained that this investment would not only feed domectic population with sufficient animal protein, so the healthy generations that would need fewer hospitals and less nursing homes.

Voicing that some people who slander of milk and dairy products produced by the industry at every opportunity, Tezel warned them, "Our milk is healthy but their knowledge is dirty."

SETBİR Chairman Tarık Tezel emphasized that more than half of the milk produced in Turkey are either being unregistered processed or sold as street milk!

Dairy industry enterprises approved by 7 different Ministries...

Stating that public authority registered and supervised by 7 different Ministries, 2 thousand 258 enterprises operate in national dairy and dairy products sector in Turkey, Tezel continued as follows:

“Our industry transforms raw milk obtained from more than 500 thousand farmers-producers every month into healthy, packaged, hygienic drinking milk and milk products. In addition to this, with the direct employment it provides and the goods and services it receives from its suppliers, it becomes the gate of livelihood for 10 thousand people. The products of our sector meet consumers at 600 thousand sales points in Turkey and 88 countries abroad."


Tezel also shared this information: "Turkey in 2018 produced 22.1 million tons of raw milk. 90.5 percent of this amount was cow, 6.5 percent was sheep, 2.5 percent was goat and 0.5 percent was buffalo milk. Besides 1.66 million tons of drinking milk, 110 thousand tons of milk powder, butter 65 thousand tons, 756 thousand tons of cheese, yogurt 1.20 million tons, 730 thousand tons of buttermilk produced by dairy industry in 2018."

"More than half of the milk produced is processed informally or consumed as street milk"

"Our industry realized this production by processing 45 percent of the total cow milk produced in 2018. In other words, while processed by the last year with less than half the milk produced in Turkey industry, more than half of this amount was treated by the unregistered businesses or consumed as street milk" Tezel noted.

"One of the main reasons for this growth of the informal economy is spreading disinformation about packaced milk and dairy products although our sector with its existing capacity, technological infrastructure and technical know-how has a potential of processing all raw milk produced in Turkey.
On the other hand, this unregistered size causes the sector not to pay as much as the tax paid today, thus causing a serious loss in tax revenues" Tezel concluded...