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KARACHI, September 3, 2026: Tetra Pak has called for urgent reforms in Pakistan’s food safety, taxation and food infrastructure to address the country’s growing nutrition and malnutrition challenges and improve access to safe, nutritious and affordable food.
Speaking during a two-day high-level dialogue in Islamabad, Noor Aftab, Director Corporate Affairs for Pakistan, Middle East, North and West Africa at Tetra Pak, said Pakistan’s nutrition challenge extends beyond food availability and requires stronger systems for processing, packaging, storage and distribution.
He stressed that comprehensive reforms in food-safety laws are needed to ensure nutritional products can be produced and delivered safely at scale. He also called for fiscal reforms and taxation relief to keep essential nutrient-dense foods affordable, particularly amid high inflation and declining purchasing power.
Noor Aftab described food safety as a critical part of the food system, noting that processing, packaging, logistics, storage and transportation are essential to ensuring food reaches consumers safely.
He highlighted Pakistan’s dairy sector as a major opportunity for improving nutrition, farmer incomes, food security, industrial development and future exports. He also emphasized the need to increase farm-level productivity, noting that average milk yields remain below those of leading dairy markets.
According to Tetra Pak, combining higher dairy productivity with greater processing capacity and stronger food-safety systems could significantly increase the sector’s economic potential.
The dialogue also highlighted the importance of school feeding programmes as a tool to improve child nutrition. Tetra Pak noted that it has supported school milk programmes globally since 1962.
The broader discussion highlighted that four out of every 10 children under five in Pakistan are stunted, describing the situation as a national emergency. Participants stressed the need to improve supply-chain incentives, workforce capabilities and food-safety standards to tackle malnutrition.
