DSM first company to endorse the ‘Roadmap to End Global Hunger’

Heerlen, NL, Royal DSM N.V., the global Life Sciences and Materials Sciences company headquartered in the Netherlands, today announced that it has officially endorsed the ‘Roadmap to End Global Hunger’, a comprehensive strategy announced by a broad based coalition of leading humanitarian organizations aimed at addressing global hunger through short, mid range and long term initiatives focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving global hunger by 2015.

DSM, as a world leader in nutrition, is proud to be the first company to endorse this strategy, and pledges to continue its work in partnership with humanitarian organizations and governments around the world to find sustainable solutions to the issue of micronutrient deficiency. This endorsement further demonstrates DSM’s commitment to addressing the problem of micronutrient deficiency – or ‘hidden hunger’ as it is also known – a problem that affects an estimated 2 billion people across the world.

The Roadmap to End Global Hunger sets forth a strategy and comprehensive plan for the United States government to lead the international community in alleviating all forms of hunger. It calls for increased allocation of resources to address the challenges of hunger and malnutrition and the creation of a White House Office on Global Hunger and Food Security.

The private sector has a crucial role to play in addressing the problem of hidden hunger in both the developed and the developing world through the development of new business models, and nutritious food and food supplements, tailored to the specific needs of particular population groups.

DSM is for example delivering support to the World Food Programme through donating its MixMe™ sachets - a single dose sachet of vitamins and minerals that can be sprinkled over food just before serving or eating. So far approximately 250,000 thousand people across Kenya, Nepal and Bangladesh have been supplied with the MixMe™ sachets. For another product, NutriRice™, DSM recently received the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) award for the most important innovation towards addressing micronutrient malnutrition.

On the occasion of the Micronutrient Forum 2009 in Beijing, DSM has started to raise awareness for what is in danger of becoming a forgotten issue and signed a private sector declaration calling for action. DSM took a next step in participating in the Amsterdam Initiative on Malnutrition (AIM), a Dutch public-private partnership, launched at the end of May 2009, aiming at eliminating malnutrition for 100 million people in Africa by 2015.

According to Stephan Tanda, Member of the Managing Board of DSM: ‘It is clear that not one sector – neither public, nor private – will be able to solve the problem of hidden hunger alone. Both public and private sectors will have to work together very closely. We are happy to endorse this important US initiative addressing the challenges of malnutrition.’

He further stated that ’We welcome the measures recently announced at the G8 Summit to address the problem of food security, and urge the US Administration, in partnership with the private sector and other stakeholders, to show similar leadership in relation to hidden hunger: the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

DSM is committed to continuing to work in partnership with the Friends of the World Food Programme, government, trade associations, corporate stakeholders and other private sector actors to facilitate further successful public/private partnerships in finding sustainable solutions to hunger issues and furthering the strategic goals set forth in the Roadmap to End Global Hunger.