Students Protest Public School Milk Poisonings

7 activists from High School Young Hope, a high school activist group, attended the free milk distribution promotion event held in Istanbul, protesting last year's poisoning of thousands of students.

Run by National Milk Council, the milk distribution project aims to distribute milk to 6,290,977 elementary school students three times a week.

Harun Çallı, National Milk Council chairperson, acknowledged that thousands of students were affected by free milk distributions. Upon a question asked by activist students, Çallı continued: "However, they were not poisoned at all. Those kids were lactose intolerant. If lab tests show any negative results, we suspend our distribution."

Claiming that their questions were not properly responded, activist high school students opened up banners that said "School milk is full of poison", "AKP, take hands off high school" and "School milk aims market only".

"This milk project steals the future of our little brothers and sisters. Those bottles don't contain milk but poison. We won't let that poison to our little brothers and sisters. We won't let that marketing mentality into our public schools," said activist students while leaving the event. (BK/BM)