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Call for traditional dairy items

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, Oct. 27

THE Indian dairy industry will have to shift its future focus to traditional milk products in order to strengthen its viability and increase the organised sector's share in total milk processing, according to Mr P.R. Gupta, an industry consultant and Edi tor & Publisher of Dairy India Yearbook.

Mr Gupta said the country's organised dairy sector was currently focussing almost entirely on western products such as milk powder, butter, cheese and ice-cream for its product mix. This was notwithstanding the fact that traditional products accounted fo r over 90 per cent of all dairy products consumed in the country. The only traditional product being produced by dairies in any significant scale was ghee.

According to him, a major reason for the organised sector handling only 10-12 per cent of the country's total milk production of 78 million tonnes had to do with its current product mix, which was confined to western products having limited consumer appe al.

``Traditional milk products have the potential to become a major profit centre for the organised industry, given the sheer mass appeal it enjoys. This, however, calls for large-scale process modernisation'', he said.

But even here, he said ``there is no need to re-invent the wheel'' because some of the food processing methods available in the West could be usefully adapted to mass produce traditional products with some modifications. In fact, even organisations such as the National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, and the National Dairy Development Board had carried out innovations for the assembly-line manufacture of burfi, dahi, shrikhand, gulab jamun, rasogolla, mishti doi and the like.

The biggest advantage of modernising the traditional dairy sector, Mr Gupta said, was the massive energy savings it would generate.

Mr Gupta said some dairies in the country were already manufacturing traditional dairy products using modern technologies.

``But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The organised industry has so far not exploited even a minuscule of the actual potential,'' he said.

Mr Gupta, who has been in the `dairy information' business for the last 25 years, is in the process of bringing out a 350-page compendium on the Technology of Indian Milk Products, which is aimed at serving as a reference book and practical guide of reco mmended manufacturing practices for the industry.