202 dairy farms in Ukraine received aid from Switzerland

As part of humanitarian aid from the Swiss government, 202 dairy farms in Ukraine received hygiene and disinfection products that ensure compliance with sanitary standards at work. This was made possible thanks to an initiative aimed at improving access to quality and safe milk.

According to information from the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, the program lasted from the end of November 2023 to September 2024. As part of the second phase of the project, humanitarian aid was provided to the farms most affected by the hostilities in Ukraine.

Among the regions that received support, the largest number of dairy farms are located in Kharkiv region - 60, Dnipropetrovsk region - 32, Odesa region - 29, Mykolaiv region - 27 and Kyiv region - 19. In total, more than 126 thousand heads of cattle are kept in these farms, including more than 54 thousand cows.

To participate in the humanitarian project, farms had to be registered in accordance with the food legislation of Ukraine. It is worth noting that 78 of the aid recipients are small producers who keep up to 100 cows and sell milk as a food product.

Since the beginning of the project, at the end of 2022, a total of 446 dairy farms have received the necessary means to ensure proper production conditions. Among the materials received were means for washing and disinfecting milking equipment, napkins for udder hygiene, gloves for milkers, as well as reagents for detecting hidden forms of mastitis. This aid fully covers the needs of farms for three months.

Switzerland allocated 4.8 million Swiss francs for the purchase of hygiene products as part of a three-year humanitarian initiative. This support was essential in the difficult early months of the war, helping farmers overcome difficulties in accessing resources and ensuring compliance with hygiene standards in primary milk production.

"The humanitarian project from Switzerland, which began in the first months of the war, has today covered almost a third of all dairy farms in Ukraine. This support is critical for the recovery and preservation of the production potential of the dairy industry, especially in those areas most affected by the war," — noted First Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy of Ukraine Taras Vysotskyi.