Milk, for allergic children is better than donkey

For children allergic to cow's milk, the total elimination of cow's milk and its derivatives is essential, while for premature infants it would be desirable to have a better tolerated supplement available: therefore it is essential to have substitute foods that are tolerated and have nutritionally adequate and palatable in order to be accepted.

The Senate Agriculture Commission starts from these premises to valorise the Italian donkey milk supply chains in order to increase their production and consumption. In support, recent studies testify that in allergic children, with multiple food allergies including allergy to cow's milk, donkey's milk is tolerated in more than 85 percent of cases.

Not only that: integrating breast milk with donkey milk reduces the risk of food intolerance in infants by 2,5 times. What's more: its particular composition and properties make donkey milk not only useful as nourishment, but also for other uses such as para-pharmacological and cosmetic. However, there are problems. First of all because in recent decades there has been a drastic reduction of donkeys due to a progressive lack of utility in the jobs in which they were originally indispensable, especially in agriculture.

Furthermore, the donkey has a very limited milk production capacity: on average, it produces four liters a day and only during the period in which there is a foal and if we consider that weaning takes place after about six months and that gestation lasts on average twelve, the limited production possibilities are understood. On the consumer side, these conditions make donkey milk particularly expensive and difficult to find; on the producer's side, however, the limited production capacity, the very high maintenance costs of the animal and the market's lack of knowledge of the product make its breeding not very convenient.   

And here then is the bill being examined by the Senate which, to encourage production, provides farmers with a tax credit of 4 euros per liter. The 4% VAT rate is applied to packaged donkey milk as for fresh milk packaged for retail sale. It then establishes the free supply of donkey milk at the expense of the national health service, for premature infants (born before the thirty-seventh week of gestation) and children up to 8 years of age who have been diagnosed with an allergy to cow's milk proteins . The estimated cost is 3 million a year, which is covered with a similar reduction in the fund for structural interventions in economic policy.