Jonathan likes his milk

28/09/2009 - Today a new Healthy Eating Campaign for European school children was launched by the European Commission. Under the slogan "Eat it, Drink it, Move it" three roadshows will tour seven European countries, giving children a chance to take part in educational activities and games. Also part of the campaign are an interactive website, competitions and other events with one key goal in mind – to change children’s eating habits for the better.

European School Milk Scheme

In response to the requests and suggestions of Member States and the European Parliament, the European Commission adopted in 2008 a new version of the EU School Milk Scheme with simple and clear implementation rules that provides a larger range of healthy dairy products to more children.

The European School Milk Scheme is intended to encourage consumption among children of healthy dairy products containing important vitamins and minerals. The scheme does not only have a nutritional character but also an educational character and contributes therefore greatly to the fight against obesity among children. The School Milk Scheme is there to provide quality products for children, to contribute to a healthy way of living and to nutritional education with a better knowledge on products.

The School Milk Scheme has recently been reviewed by the European Commission taking into account a number of requests and suggestions from the Member States, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.

With the review of the scheme a number of new, innovative and more attractive products have become eligible for the EU-subsidy. Further to various types of drinking milk, children have access, among others, to certain fermented milk products with fruit or fruit juice, plain fermented milk products, such as yoghurt, buttermilk, kephir etc., and a wide range of cheeses. The EU-subsidy, moreover, is the same for full-fat, medium-fat or low-fat products. Member States have the possibility to choose the products they wish to distribute from the list of eligible products and they also have the possibility to apply stricter standards than those set out in the Community list.

With the new regulation, secondary schools have the same access to the scheme as nursery schools, other pre-school establishments and primary schools. Secondary schools were in the past often not participating in the School Milk Scheme as it was not obligatory for the Member States to include them.

In the 2006/2007 school year the equivalence of 305 000 tonnes of milk was distributed in schools in 22 Member States with Community expenditures of more than 50 million EUR. With the new and simpler rules of the scheme as well as the new and more attractive products available, it is expected that in the future even more schools will participate in the distribution of dairy products allowing and encouraging children to replace low-quality food and drinks with convenient, high-quality dairy products.

Startpage

Frequently asked questions [pdf]

Links to Member State websites

Commission Regulation(EC) No 657/2008 of 10 July 2008 laying down detailed rules for applying Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 as regards Community aid for supplying milk and certain milk products to pupils in educational establishments
available [pdf] in:

Press release
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