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Milk Development Council

Answer

The Milk Development Council (MDC) is an executive non-departmental public body funded by a levy paid by milk producers on all milk sold from their farms in Great Britain.The table below shows the average number of employees over the past three financial years together with the present figures. The increase in staff numbers from 17 in 2002-03 to 51 to date is mainly due to the growth of the School Milk Project, which provides facilitators to encourage milk consumption in schools. The MDC now has 14 school milk facilitators, most of whom operate on a part-time basis. The work is also part-funded by dairy processing companies.The rise in numbers of extension officers (field-based staff that help to implement the fruits of research and development work on-farm) has been driven by the need to gain better coverage of Great Britain.The increase in numbers in office-based staff is a result of a move away from use of external consultants to recruitment of permanent staff in the relevant areas.

	Present	Average	Average	Average
		2004–05	2003–04	2002–03
Extension Officers	8	6	6	4
School Milk Facilitators	14 (11)	14 (12)	3 (2)	–
Other Staff	29 (1)	23	19	13 (1)
Total	51 (12)	43 (12)	28 (2)	17 (l)
Source: Milk Development Council Note: The numbers in brackets reflect those that are part-time

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

3238; 677 c102WA

Session

2005-06

Subjects

Staff Milk Development Council

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk