PCC to put up dairy

Stores in tour areas

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, August 18 (PIA) –Like the phoenix which rises from the ashes, Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) at the Ubay Stock Farm in Lomangog is now up mooing to serve people and tourists as well with its Bohol carabao dairy outlet. 

Now ready with their complete line of dairy of products ranging from carabao milk, cheese, processed dairy products including known Bohol cheesy sweets: torta, pastillas, cheese puto, chocobao, freshmilk, carabao ice cream and many more dairy products, the PCC also recently opened its Milka Krèm Plant and its first Bohol Dairy outlet in Lumangog.

This, according to the PCC is the first step in the plan to put up carabao milk and processed dairy products outlet in the plan to saturate Bohol with carabao milk and its products. 

The ultimate dream is to put up Bohol Dairy Outlets in all tourism destinations in Bohol, shares Lenie Fe Libres, PCC information officer. 

Libres, a developmental communications graduate at the Leyte State University, told tourism product development team assembled by Japan International Cooperation (JICA) for its eco-tourism Bohol project that very few people see the potential of carabao milk. 

Fifteen years ago, Bohol was a non-dairy area until 1982 when the Philippine Carabao Research and Development Center was established and did extensive research on the farm animal.

A decade later, the center, located at the Ubay Stock Farm in Bohol started milking carabaos, a largely rare thing in a province whose idea of a carabao is only as extensive as a beast of burden and a meat source. 

Five years after the 1992 successful milking carabaos, PCC started processing chocomilk and freshmilk manually until three years later when the processing plant stood, Libres recalled. 

By 2010, PCC research went out of their laboratories when the milk processing reached their farmer adoptors who loaned bulls to improve the native breds. 

Now in the towns of Dagohoy, San Miguel Trinidad and some few more towns with the potential for carabao daily development, the PCC also loans bulls to upgrade the local breeds. 

The ultimate goal, is to increase the income of farmer adoptors, PCC sources said, who added that the target is to produce bulk dairy to make it commercially viable. 

At the PCC, the eco-tourism stop includes a briefing on the PCC and the Bohol Dairy Development, a carabao milk and dairy products refreshments, a chance to watch mechanized milking, manually milk the carabaos, watch calves feed, learn the basics of animal care and a brief glimpse of the paddocks where milking cows freely graze. (rac/PIA-7/Bohol)