PRODUCCIÓN DE CONCENTRADO PROTEICO DE PESCADO EN CHILE, CA. 1950-1973: UN CASO FALLIDO DE COOPERACIÓN INTERNACIONAL EN LA BATALLA CONTRA LA DESNUTRICIÓN

During the first half of the twentieth century, malnutrition was a serious social problem in Chile, while the main public policy to reduce it was the provision of milk to the population. However, there was another, less well-known policy to improve the nutritional status of the population during the ISI period: producing fish protein concentrate for human consumption (FPC), given the difficulty of importing or producing more milk and meat, as well as catching and distributing fresh fish. The main objective of this article is to provide a deep account of this promising project, which involved an international collaboration agreement between the Chilean government, UNICEF and FAO to install a pilot plant for FPC in Chile during the mid-1950s. However, after 15 years of experiments, the project failed, since there was never mass distribution of this product in Chile. Based on qualitative and quantitative sources, the reasons for the failure of this project, and others during the 1960s, are discussed. Understanding why malnutrition continued to be a social problem in Chile until the 1980s, despite the implementation of various public policies, is one of the contributions of this article.