DSM joins fight to halve global hunger by 2015
The United Nations 'Roadmap to End Global Hunger' seeks to devote multinational resources to alleviating hunger via short, mid range and long term initiatives focused on achieving the ‘forgotten’ Millennium Development Goals of halving global hunger by 2015.
DSM is the first company to endorse the strategy and said it will up its work with humanitarian organizationsand governments around the world, “to find sustainable solutions to the issue of micronutrient deficiency.” It has also signed a private sector declaration calling for action from other companies.
It has joined the recently launched Amsterdam Initiative on Malnutrition (AIM), a Dutch public-private partnership, which has a more narrow target of eliminating nutrient deficiency among 100 million people in Africa by 2015.
Micronutrient deficiency, also called ‘hidden hunger’, is believed to affect about one third of the world’s 6.7 billion-strong population.
Through the World Food Programme, DSM is donating MixMe sachets – a single dose sachet of vitamins and minerals that can be sprinkled over foods.
About 250,000 people in Kenya, Nepal and Bangladesh have been supplied with the sachets and its NutriRice has won the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) award for malnutrition innovation.
“It is clear that not one sector – neither public, nor private – will be able to solve the problem of hidden hunger alone. Both public and private sectors will have to work together very closely,” said Stephen Tander, member of the managing board of DSM. “We are happy to endorse this important US initiative addressing the challenges of malnutrition.”
He added: “We welcome the measures recently announced at the G8 Summit to address the problem of food security, and urge the US Administration, in partnership with the private sector and other stakeholders, to show similar leadership in relation to hidden hunger: the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.”
