ISLAMABAD: A senior representative of a leading dairy company Thursday disclosed that Pakistan’s nutrition challenge is to ensure nutritious products remain safe and high-quality while reaching consumers efficiently and affordably.
Noor Aftab, Director, Corporate Affairs for Pakistan, Middle East, North and West Africa at Tetra Pak made these remarks during a recent two-day dialogue concluded here on Thursday.
He said Pakistan’s nutrition challenge goes beyond food availability. Strengthening food processing, packaging, storage and distribution can help attract more investment across the food value chain, supported by the right policies.
The high-level event gathered global development leaders, policymakers, and private sector stakeholders to address Pakistan’s escalating child stunting and malnutrition crisis.
Noor Aftab strongly urged for comprehensive reforms in food-safety laws and taxation. Speaking as a panelist alongside food policy experts and corporate sustainability leaders, Noor Aftab focused on structural changes needed to secure nutrition.
He emphasised the urgent need to reshape food-safety legislation to support the delivery of safe, scalable, and processed nutritional products. He pointed out that structural fiscal reforms and taxation relief are critical to keeping vital, nutrient-dense foods affordable for the general populace, especially amidst high inflation and dwindling purchasing power.
“A food or a product may be full of nutrition but may not be safe to consume,” he said, describing food safety as the “critical middle” of the food system, where processing, packaging, logistics, storage and transportation play an important role in ensuring that food reaches consumers safely.
The dairy sector, he said, presents one of the clearest opportunities to translate these principles into broader economic and nutritional gains. Pakistan is among the world’s largest milk producers, giving the sector considerable potential to support farmer incomes, food security, industrial development and future exports.
Noor also highlighted productivity improvement at the farm level as an important part of developing a stronger and more competitive dairy industry. “Average milk yields in Pakistan remain considerably below those achieved in leading dairy markets, creating an opportunity to improve productivity while strengthening the economics of dairy farming. Higher productivity, combined with greater processing capacity and stronger food safety systems, could significantly expand the economic potential of Pakistan’s dairy industry,” Noor said.
School feeding programmes provide another example of how nutrition interventions can generate wider benefits when supported by strong food systems and sustained partnerships. Tetra Pak has been involved in school milk programmes globally since 1962, with millions of children receiving milk and fortified beverages in Tetra Pak packages across countries.
The broader dialogue highlighted that 4 out of every 10 children under five in Pakistan are stunted, which was described as a “ational emergency” The panel collectively concluded that solving malnutrition requires fixing supply chain incentives, improving workforce capabilities, and standardizing food safety across the country.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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