MAIN ACTIONS TAKEN BY THE MPO AFTER ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE 21-DAY LOCKDOWN

MPO FLASH 1/31 March 2020

1. Dr Chris van Dijk, chief executive of the MPO is a member of the Covid-19 task team supporting the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development.
2. The MPO will hold meetings with some of the major retailers over the next two days to inform them about the market situation in the primary dairy industry, to point out that any imports (specifically at this time) are unnecessary, and to emphasize that the demand elasticity of dairy can well be used to stimulate demand and thereby help the consumer to increase vitamin intake and strengthen immunity.
3. The MPO motivated a request to Milk SA to request the milk flow statistics weekly and to make it available to the market.
4. The MPO is aware that on 30 March, Lancewood announced that the producer price will be reduced by 45 cents with effect from 1 April 2020. This is not an April fool’s joke. The MPO is conducting a series of actions to point out that this unnecessary and try to avoid this. MPO members will be informed by letter and in the press of what follows. The actions kicked off today.
5. The MPO is also engaged in a variety of initiatives to highlight the benefits of milk and milk product consumption via social media, radio and TV interviews. Milk is packed with essential nutrients that boost your immunity and help fight viruses, also as a counter to the Covid-19 virus. MPO members are asked to engage on the social media platforms and to like and share MPO dairy snippets to increase the digital footprint via Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp to spread the message to Joe Public.
6. With the home restriction, the printing of The Dairy Mail‘s May issue was also delayed, but the May issue will certainly be available digitally by 1 May 2020.