School milk program hits new milestone

China's efforts to boost child nutrition nationwide through dairy consumption has reached a new milestone, with more than 30 million primary and secondary school students covered by the "National School Milk Program", according to a 2025 bulletin released by the Dairy Association of China on Monday.

Launched in 2000, the program has evolved into one of the country's most important public nutrition initiatives. It currently spans all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the mainland, with over 100,000 schools participating, an official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said.

"The school milk program has achieved notable success through multiparty collaboration over the past 25 years," said Wei Lin, director of the dairy division at the bureau of animal husbandry and veterinary services of the ministry.

"It's time to further integrate the program with the development of the dairy sector," Wei said at the 16th Dairy Conference.

According to the national school milk program promotion bulletin (2025), released by the association, as of June this year, 176 licensed dairy processing enterprises — under 98 corporate groups — were authorized to use the official "China school milk "logo. Collectively, they have a daily processing capacity of 94,000 metric tons of raw milk.

In the 2024 academic year, the total production of school milk reached 1.001 million tons, valued at 8.37 billion yuan ($1.17 billion). The number of daily school milk servings rose to 26.72 million in 2024, a sharp increase from just 500,000 in 2001.

The program is not only growing in scale, but is also delivering tangible health benefits.

Data from the 2024 assessment report show that grade 3 to grade 5 students receiving school milk regularly were on average 2 cm taller and had 4.8 percentage points lower emaciation rates compared to those who did not receive such nutrition, according to Wei.

The rapid expansion of the program has been supported by solid progress in China's dairy production. Since 2008, the automation rate in dairy farming has surged from less than 20 percent to nearly 80 percent in 2024. Large-scale farms with more than 1,000 cows now account for over 60 percent of total operations.

Raw milk quality has also improved: the pass rate for safety inspections has remained above 99 percent, with no cases of prohibited additives in recent years. These changes provide a strong base for safely scaling up school milk distribution nationwide, she added.

"We will deepen collaboration across the dairy ecosystem," said Angela Mou, vice-president of corporate communications and sustainability at Tetra Pak Greater China.

"With government guidance, corporate commitment and social cooperation, the school milk program can become a nice project of China's health drive."