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On today's morning show with Kwambox and Kerry, the duo conducted an interview with the Principal Secretary for Livestock, Jonathan Mueke, about how his ministry is ensuring cleanliness for consumers and the production of high-quality goods.
"From the milking, how you put it in the container, this all depends on the cleanliness of this farmer, right? And Kerry, how many times do we talk about Kenyans not washing their hands? Like, you could be standing at the bathroom just like this and just watch people come out and they don’t wash their hands," Kwambox asked.
"It is prudent that we use formal structures," the CS started before adding,
"Yes, because now that creates the checks and balances to ensure that if the farmer has not done the hygiene properly, once they sell it to the processor or their local cooperative, they have milk testing machines called lactometers that can be used to check the safety of the milk.
And the milk that is not safe then gets rejected. The farmer knows that in business, if I don’t produce safe milk, it won’t be bought.
So they ensure then they follow the hygiene, and we do a lot of farmer awareness during farmer field days.
Kwambox, just tomorrow we are going to do a big farmer's field day in Meru Central Cooperative where we are inviting over 20,000 farmers to talk to them about these things."
According to the PS, the guest of honour during that event will be President Ruto, who will also engage with the farmers along with other experts concerning what to do to ensure that milk is safe.
"Something else I would like to add that is transformational in our dairy industry is this government has come up with a new policy where we are moving from quantity-based payment, where we traditionally pay the farmer based on the amount of milk that they bring, and I heard you and Kerry talk about a cow producing 15 liters, yeah? So you get 15 times fifty shillings," the PS said.
"But we are switching that from quantity-based to quality-based payment, which is now the norm around the world. It is a best practice, and we are telling the farmer if you give us milk that is of high quality, has high butterfat content, has high protein content, those are used for creating value, high-value milk products like yogurt, butter, and cheese, then we pay you more."
Watch the interview below:
