NOW, CAMEL MILK CHEESE

Shalini Saksena speaks with Anne Bruntse, a Kenya-based agronomist specialised in organic farming, who is using camel milk to make cheese

Move over cow, buffalo and goat milk. The latest trend to hit the markets is camel milk and milk powder. You read that right — camel milk! People in States like Rajasthan and Gujarat are already supplying this milk to individuals. Now that Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has given its nod, the milk may soon find its way in other States as well.

But one is told that it is still early days. It will take some time before the milk actually hits the stores. This is because, there are several challenges. First, to change the mindset of the people to open themselves to the idea of having camel milk instead of cow or buffalo. Also, like goat milk that was, at one time, considered milk for the poor, camel milk is for the really poor. But considering that India is making chocolates using camel milk could mean that there will be many willing to drink the milk — even if it is a novelty. Though the taste, one is told, of camel milk is no different than other milks that are already available in the market. Second, is how to get the milk from the interiors to a place where it can be pasturised and then packed and sent? Marketing is another area that needs to be taken care of and who the end consumer is. The pastoralists are constantly on the move. To gather the milk at one collection centre is a challenge that needs to be addressed.

Anne Bruntse, a Danish-Kenyan agronomist specialised in organic farming, including dairying and camel cheese-making, was in the Capital recently. She held a workshop wherein she demonstrated how camel milk can be used to create a simple Halloumi cheese.

The good part was that at the end of the workshop, one could walk away with the cheese that one had made including newfound insights into a relatively rare ingredient. The recipe that Bruntse used is one of the many that are available. But she uses the recipe of Halloumi cheese since it is the fastest way — it only takes five hours to make it. The other cheese making processes using camel milk may take up to as long as three days or even more.

“The reason why it takes such a long time is because camel milk has no coagulant and even the fat content in the milk is extremely low. These coagulants are present in cow, goat and buffalo milk but absent in camel milk. These are enzymes that are made based on the requirement of the calves. I was approached in 2010 to test it and got a box of coagulant to carry out some tests. We did this in 2012 and it all started from there,” Bruntse says, who had been experimenting with making cheese from camel milk.

Since there was no coagulant, the first step was to develop one that can be effectively used. A lot of research was done. It took time before coagulant could be made. Therefore, it is not easy to make cheese out of this milk.

After much experimentation they found a coagulant — pepsin — but it was very bitter. Since the camel milk is resistant to coagulant, a lot of it had to be used making the cheese bitter. There was need to develop a coagulant that did the work and was not biter.

The result, after five years, is that the market is now ready to have cheese like feta, halloumi, cream cheese, etc.

One is told that camel milk has a different composition than that of cow or buffalo milk when it comes to protein, fat content etc. “When a calf is born of a camel, the fat in the milk is very high but as time passes, it keeps falling and by the end of it, the milk is extremely thin. It takes two years for a calf to wean off. This meant that there was lot of extra milk — almost 150 kg in excess each week. More so, after the rainy season.

“To begin with, this milk was consumed by the pastoralists. They would feed it to the dogs as well. Since they didn’t have any means to store it, they would even drink it if it became sour. To make it drinkable, a lot of sugar is added. But then some women started bringing this milk in to the towns in Kenya. But it had no takers since the hygiene standards in the cities and rural areas are very different. Some of the milk that came had manure floating on top. So the women had to be taught cleanliness. There is scarcity of water where these women lived. We had to teach them how to clean their containers. We also taught them to boil the milk so that it would not go sour,” Bruntse tells you, who has a dairy on her in Kenya and has worked as a consultant for a variety of Government programmes and non-Government organisations, including Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development.

Bruntse’s job was to develop products that could last up to the next season and have some left for sale. She did lot of experiments — they managed to make ghee and made sweet cheese since the pastoralists don’t like salty cheese. Bruntse found that the ghee sold as did the cheese. The locales would use dried and slightly sour cheese in their sour porridge, which they love.

“The minute the hygiene standards improved, their milk had many takers and they did roaring business. Other women too wanted to know how to sell their milk and soon the hygiene became a norm. Also, an interesting way to ensure that the milk doesn’t go off, is to smoke it. This meant that people were willing to give a higher price for the milk. In fact, one is told that the cost of camel milk is almost five times that of cow or buffalo when it finds it way in supermarkets,” Bruntse says.

This could stem from the fact that pastoralists swear by camel milk and Ayurveda lists many benefits. It’s an open secret among alternative health experts and now it’s the turn of modern science to discover the virtues of camel milk.

One is also told that this is the only milk that has zero lactose — 70 per cent of our population is said to suffer lactose intolerance — and closest in constitution to human mothers’ milk, research is underway on its claimed anti-diabetic, anti-autism and anti-allergic properties. The locales (Kenya) say that it has medicinal properties and can cure ulcers. Apparently drinking camel milk for three months can in fact help many people on insulin go off it since it has pre-insulin compounds. “However, a lot more study and research has to be conducted before it can be proven for sure,” Bruntse tells you.

In India, there are NGOs who are selling camel milk locally. They are paturising it and putting them in small bottles, freezing them before they are shipped. The good part is that camel milk can sit in the fridge for up to 10 days without turning sour because of its anti-mircrobials.