Why Bulla & Pink Milk Is No Longer In Jamaican Schools (Transcript)

As anyone over the age of 30 who went to a primary school in Jamaica would tell you, the bulla and pink milk was an experience that made their childhood. However, the famous government-supplied meal for children from low-income schools has an almost 35-year history in Jamaican society and defines many Jamaicans' primary school experience.

Early Days of Policing in Jamaica In The Beginning 

The first school feeding programme in Jamaica started in 1926 where lunches were provided to public schools through charitable efforts. By 1939, the colonial government of Jamaica provided limited school lunches across the island. Then, by 1955, with increased US presence on the island, school feeding programmes were expanded through aid from the US.

However, by 1962, it was reported that malnutrition was the largest single cause of death in Jamaica for children under the age of one. To tackle the issue of children who were on the verge of malnutrition and entering the public school system, in 1971, the government signed a Food-for-Peace agreement with USAID, the US Agency for International Development, which expanded the school feeding programmes. By 1973, the government-owned company, Nutrition Production Company, NPL, was established to maintain a more structured school feeding programmes by producing and distributing a nutritious meal to designated school children. With the aim to increase the daily protein intake of children, the meal was greatly subsidized so children from lower-income families could afford it. In its inception, the company supplied public schools throughout Kingston and St Andrew with a bun and a half pint of milk. The milk was a combination of skimmed milk powder which was processed with butter, oil, or soy, and then flavored with vanilla.

Outside of the Kingston metropolitan area, some schools were granted funds to purchase meat and vegetables to provide children with a cooked meal. Then, with the expansion of the NPL, schools outside of Kingston and St Andrew, gradually joined the NPL programmes. By 1976, with assistance from the UN World Food Programme, WFP, a patty and milk programme was also introduced. As such, by 1978, around 120,000 school children in Kingston and St Andrew, and 100,000 in rural Jamaica were supplied with a bun or patty, and a half pink of milk; or with a cooked lunch. Still, by the early 1980’s, some of these programmes were cut, most notably the patty and milk programme.

Yet, on the other side of the world, another school programmes was being praised. This time, it was the Nutribun and Milk programmes in the Philippines. The nutribun was developed by the USAID in 1970 to assist the nation feed school children, in the wake of a series of typhoons that wrecked the island. Using a base product that could be modified with local ingredients, the programmes gained success as it extended the shelf life of the bun.

By 1984, it was this programmes that the new minister of education, Dr Mavis Gilmore, would seek to implement in Jamaica.

The Start of Bulla & Milk

Dr Mavis Gilmore graduated in 1951 with a medical degree from Howard University. She returned to Jamaica to do her surgical rotation and soon after became a surgeon specialist. With this career accomplishment, she became the first woman surgeon specialist in the Caribbean. It was while working as a consultant surgeon at Kingston Public Hospital that she decided to enter politics by way of the JLP. When the party won the 1980 election, Dr Gilmore was appointed Minister of Education. By 1984, her ministry adopted the Phillippines’ nutribun and milk programmes in Jamaica school. Under this new school feeding programmes, primary schools were granted meals twice a week. The meals consisted of half a pint of milk, and a bun, that had a three-day shelf life. Dr. Gilmore had high hopes for the programmes where she told the media that the programmes would be an alternative to cooked meals that schools had trouble maintaining and would increase attendance.

Initially, the programmes was supported by the WFP from 1984-1997, where resources were given to the government by USAID, the European Economic Community (EEC), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). When the WFP stopped sponsoring the programmes in 1997, the Jamaican government continued to maintain the programmes. As time passed, the nutribun programmes, specifically the bulla and pink milk, became the face of the nutribun programmes. At its height, some 600,000 students received nutribun or cooked meals for free or a small fee.

Still, even though the programmes was praised by public figures, numerous problems arise.

The Problems with Bulla and Milk

One of the first problems voiced by teachers was that the nutribun programmes took away from their main function of being a teacher - to teach. As one teacher told Dr. Winsome M. Chunnu for their then doctoral research:

“Naturally, it is more work and sometimes the crates that were sent to the classroom contained punctured milk containers. With these students would spill the milk all over the classroom floor. Teachers then had to clean up. Many teachers were unhappy with performing the custodial function that accompanied the distribution of the nutribun”.

There were also complains from some teachers that because of these additional responsibilities, it infringed on their lunchtime. Some teachers even used the nutribun responsibilities as a means for additional pay. To deal with these complains, the ministry, supplied schools with helpers to assist with the distribution of the meals. However, in some rural schools, improper road infrastructure led to many teachers and principals being responsible for transporting the nutribun to their schools. As one teacher told Dr Chunnu:

“The people at the ministry said to me, ‘If you can come and pick it up yourself, you’ll get it’. Therefore, you see, I used my VW for years until it rotted out. I lost a car”.

Furthermore, the transportation causes delivery trucks to break down and not reach the school in time. In some cases, schools would go months before receiving any nutribun. In other instances, the insufficient supply of refrigerated trucks would mean that one truck would be supplying multiple schools. Coupled with the road problems, by the time the trucks would reach some schools, the milk would be spoiled.

The spoiled milk was not only attributed to the delivery but storage as well. Some schools did not have cold storage facilities to keep the milk for distribution. As such, it would sit on the floor of classrooms and staffrooms for hours. By the time, it was distributed to students, it caused health issues such as stomach aches and diarrheas. As an alternative, sweetened juice instead of milk would soon be added to the programmes. By the mid-2010s, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, RADA, and the Banana Board were providing raw materials at a low cost to the NPL. As such, cheese bread, carrot bread, carrot muffin, banana bread, and banana muffin were added to NPL offerings. This became another issue in itself as the programmes to increase protein levels in children, was now increasing their refined sugar levels. It also did not help that nutritional data was not printed on any of these products. This became a concern for many parents, school officials and nutrition experts. As the registered nutritionist, Shannon Grant told The Gleaner in 2018: 

“We don’t know the ingredients or the nutritional content of these products. It makes no sense whatsoever for a nutritional company to be distribution something to children that has no form of labelling to indicate what they are consuming and especially now with this drive by the Government to get persons to get healthier”.

Another issue came with the status of the nutribun milk programmes as some students, wanting to distance themselves from the nutribun associated with lower class status, refused to purchase or accept the bulla and milk. In this case, they went with nothing or hardly anything to eat.

In recent years, the problem of corruption, has also plague the programmes. As another interviewee told Dr. Chunnu: 

“Some of the buns started vanishing because out of the delivery truck. Sometimes the ministry documented that 24 bags were sent to the school, but you only received 20. Therefore, you have to be alert, because some other people saw it as means of obtaining a little extra money”.

In a June 3rd, 2012 article, The Gleaner reported that several primary schools were overcharging students for the products. At this time, the ministry mandated that students were only to contribute $2 per meal for a bulla, a bun or cheese bread, and a drink of milk or sweetened juice. The ministry, also stated, that if students could not afford to pay, they should not be turned away. However, a Gleaner investigation reported that some primary schools were charging students between $3 and $4 per meal.

Furthermore, the articles stated that nutribun products have been sold to adults instead of the students, thus breaching the government policy. In these cases, the prices were jacked up even further when sold to adults. As one source told The Gleaner, a bag of juice/milk, containing 10 single plastic pouches, is sold for $40 or $50 to outsiders while a bag of 10 bullas is sold for $20.

Restructuring

By the late 2010s, to address the numerous problems with the programmes where nobody was held accountable, a restructuring of the nutribun was on the horizon. In early 2018, now Minister of Education, Ruel Reid, announced that several food programmes under the NPL, including bullas, would be removed from schools. As the then minister told The Gleaner, 

“We found that bulla, not nutri-bun, was being wasted. A lot of children were not having bulla for lunch. The bulla went home, and a lot of resources, as afar as our estimation is concerned, were water in this endeavour”

This is in keeping with another statement that the ministry would clarify to the publication later on:

“In promoting a healthier lifestyle among our children and based on a survey conducted in the 2017-2018 school year, the results showed that students were not desirous of the products being offered by NPL. With this in mind the ministry had decided to take on a new approach in providing more nutritious snacks for our students and in keeping with the strategic direction of the School Feeding Programme”

Yet, by September 2018, reports surfaced that schools officials had received few or no alternatives since the alternative removal of the bulla cakes since the start of the new academic year.

A few weeks later, outcry came from Rojas Kirlew, the principal of Cassava River Primary, who objected to the distribution of Manna Pack Rice that he was sent by NPL. The packages were distributed by the Christian organization, Feed My Starving Children. According to Mr Kirlew, no direction was given on how to prepare the products. As he told The Star in an October 18, 2018 article: 

“I have to ask my colleagues in the cluster how this thing is prepared because we didn’t know how to. This is not the first time I have seen them because I know Food For Poor has it. Some years ago, they sent a few here but I didn’t have a problem with that because to send them to the school in general is OK. But to send them to replace the nutritional products is where I have a big problem”.

Still, the Ministry responded that even though they were aware of the Manna Pack Rice, it was not a substitute for NPL products. As they told The Gleaner:

“In fact, there was a one-off donation of Manna Packs to the ministry by a charitable organisation in the latter part of the last school year. The Ministry decided to share the commodity with all of our primary schools”

In 2021, Bulla and Pink milk was officially halted in Jamaican schools. 

 Present Day

In the wake of the restructuring of the nutribun programmes, PATH, the Programme for the Advancement Through Health and Education, has expanded its duties to provide cooks meals, including breakfast and lunch, to students. The programmes has also increased monetary output to lower-income families with students in public schools.

 In 2017, the creation of a National Food Industry Task Force brought together stakeholders from the food industry and various other interest entities, such as the National Consumers League, the Jamaican Agricultural Society, and the University of Technology, to develop new dietary guidelines. As such, in recent years, the Ministry has established a ban on certain sugary products in Jamaican schools. However, the National School Nutrition Policy which green paper was shared in May 2022, has yet to be finalized and implemented, at the time of this episode recording.

In May 2023, the Ministry announced that the government has provided almost 9 billion dollars towards the school-feeding programmes for the 2023/24 fiscal year, with the aim for the NPL to continue to provide the breakfast/snack component for the school-feeding programmes. Today, the NPL operates three production plants in Kingston, St. Mary, and Westmoreland.

Still, even though the fame bullas and pink milk are no longer in the Jamaica schools, it as well as the legacy of Dr. Gilmore, has shaped the childhood of thousands of Jamaica students.