Palinurus
The Living Force
In the thread AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES CAUSED BY AN INFECTION? the following was posted:
I got intrigued and started a search. Then I found this answer: _http://www.reocities.com/madhukar_shukla/mauritaniancheese.html (bold, mine)
An updated story can be found here: _http://www.smh.com.au/world/britishmauritanian-camels-cheese-maker-banging-on-eus-door-20070409-6nv.html
Other relevant sources about camel cheese:
_http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/uaes-first-camel-cheese-to-hit-supermarket-shelves
_http://www.camelicious.ae/products_camelicious.php?pcat_id=2
_http://kylethatway.com/2012/01/29/when-all-is-lost-at-least-theres-camel-cheese/
Thorn said:Laura said:Wonder if they make cheese from camel's milk? I would dearly love to be able to have some cheese!
http://www.cheese.com/caravane/ apparently it's possible!Caravane is modern-day’s, first camel cheese produced in the early nineties by Nancy Abeiderrhamane. Its similarity to camembert has earned Caravane the nickname, ‘camelbert cheese’. Her dairy, Tiviski, located in the capital of West African Mauritania makes this cheese with the help of milk collected from the local camel herds. Vegetable rennet and calcium phosphate is used in the cheese-making process for a better and unique yield.
Sounds verrrry tasty, I've tried searching the internet and can't find it selling anywhere
oh how I miss cheese
I got intrigued and started a search. Then I found this answer: _http://www.reocities.com/madhukar_shukla/mauritaniancheese.html (bold, mine)
Why You Can't Buy Mauritanian Camel Cheese In Europe 1
With increasing liberalization, and lowering of trade barriers, there is an ever-widening market for the local produce of less developed countries. This case describes the barriers a Mauritanian company ran into when it tried to export to European Union.
Mauritania is a small nation in Northern Africa, bordering North Atlantic Ocean, and placed between Senegal and Western Sahara. It consists mostly of barren desert land, with just about 0.5% arable land. A poor country, with a GDP (adjusted to Purchasing Power Parity) of $5bn, an external debt of $1.6bn, it qualified for debt relief under the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) initiative in February 2000. Half the country's 2.8mn population of the country lives below the poverty line, and depends on agriculture and livestock for a living.
In 1989, a British-born engineer, Ms. Nancy Abeid Arahamane, realized that Mauritania had a lot of milk producing animals - camels, goats and cows - and still it imported huge quantities of milk to take care of its internal demands. Identifying an opportunity, as well to redress the problem, she got a French loan of 1mn Fr. Franks (about $141,000), and started a company, Tiviski (officially Laitière de Mauritanie) in Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott.
In just a few years, Tiviski grew and expanded its business. In the beginning, Nancy Arahamane got around 800 semi-nomads in a collective to supply camel milk to Tiviski for processing as well as for producing products from camel milk. The nomads were assured of standardized rates of 3 Fr. Franks (about 0.40$) per liter of milk. The company built centers in major towns to collect milk, keep it cold and then ship it to the dairy. Over years, Tiviski added cow and goat milk - and processed milk products, e.g., butter, cream, yogurt, chocolate, cheese, etc. - to its product range. Its sales tripled between 1993 and 2001. By 2001, the company had 14 milk products, and was producing 13,000 liters of milk per day.
The impact of her initiative was remarkable: Tiviski's successful venture raised the income levels of the herders in the collective, most of whom used to earn less than $1 a day (and lived as far as 300 km. from the capital, where traditional aid programs rarely reach); the value of cattle increased six-fold, and encouraged better care of animals; it also changed the landscape by increasing the land reserved for animal pasture and provides an outlet for the new rice agriculture of the Senegal river valley; it also helped improving Mauritania's balance of trade by making it more self-sufficient in milk, etc.
Tiviski was the first dairy in Africa (and second in the world) to pasteurize camel milk. The dairy operated state-of-the-art stainless steel continuous pasteurization equipment and packaged milk in gable-top cartons. The product quality was controlled in compliance with European standards.
One of the breakthrough products of Tiviski was cheese made from camel milk, which was also critical to its strategy. Milk business is seasonal, where in certain seasons, oversupply can overwhelm demand for fresh milk. Cheese, on the other hand, has a longer shelf life, and can help to smoothen the efficiencies.
Making cheese from camel milk, however, is not an easy task: firstly, because camel milk does not curdle easily when sour due to its unique proteins and fatty acid composition; and secondly, because making cheese requires damp, cool climate, which is not native to Mauritania. Nancy Arahamane, nevertheless, was able to develop a technique for making cheese with the help of FAO's Technical Co-operation Program, and started producing two variety of cheese. In 1993, Tiviski received the Rolex Award for Enterprise for its project for making cheese from camel milk.
Since Mauritanians don't eat cheese, whereas Europe is a large market for cheese, Tiviski decided to export camel cheese to Europe. The company achieved some international fame when they exhibited camel cheese in some of the European cheese fair, and won awards. After all, cheese made from camel milk has many unique properties, which makes it a superior product: not only it is ideally suited for people who are lactose intolerant, but also has 40% lower cholesterol than cow milk, low sugar and high mineral content, as well as higher vitamin C and protein intake. Soon a German importer offered to buy the entire camel cheese production from Tiviski.
But then she hit the roadblock!
She found that camel milk and it products are not covered in European agreements, and Mauritania does not feature in the list of countries (which was drawn in 1992) who are entitled to export animal products to European Union. To allow her to export to Europe, a special regulation (translated into 11 languages!!!) had to be issued and approved by the European Commission, Parliament and Council.
A few steps which EU took to include dromedary milk in the list of permitted imports to Europe, got held up due to the reorganization of the Commission itself. But more importantly, EU had other reservations about allowing imports of camel cheese and its products. Although the foot-and-mouth disease does not come from camel, EU expressed fears that camel milk can carry its germs, and therefore, insisted on high standards of quality control.
EU insisted that the milk had to be rigorously checked to ensure that it has been properly pasteurized. Since the usual testing procedures to check pasteurization are developed for cow milk, the camel milk does not respond to these tests. Tiviski has been partly financing studies in one of the research centers in Montpellier, France, to develop an alternative test procedure. While the research is said to be progressing, but publication of results, and then the certification of process will take its own time.
EU also insisted that to ensure standards of hygiene, camel had to be milked mechanically!!! - that, as Nicholas Stern, Chief Economist of World Bank observed, is "…bit of a challenge for the nomad of Mauritania. Essentially, what was a very promising export line in a very poor country was stopped on that kind of technicality. That is a non-tariff barrier."
In fact, even if Tiviski decides to do camel farming and invest in developing technology for milking them mechanically, there is a problem which nature has created. Unlike her bovine counterpart, the camel cow is temperamental by nature, and does not 'store' milk in its udder. If the camel cow does not like how she is being milked, she can stop producing milk and cut off the supply at will. On the other hand, a contented camel cow is known to lactate for more than 18 months.
And so, after almost 9 years when Tiviski got its European order for camel cheese in 1994, it is yet to get an entry into the European market.
____________________
1 Sources:
_http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mr.html
_http://www.intracen.org/bsrt/casestudies/successstories.pdf
_http://www.tradeforum.org/news/categoryfront.php/id/112/Mauritania.html
_http://www.kc3.co.uk/~dt/protectionism.htm
_http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pdfs/pp021210_Dairy.pdf
_http://camell.atlas.co.uk/aamilk.html
_http://allafrica.com/stories/200204230361.html
_http://www.tiviski.com/Pages/thedairy.html
An updated story can be found here: _http://www.smh.com.au/world/britishmauritanian-camels-cheese-maker-banging-on-eus-door-20070409-6nv.html
British-Mauritanian camel's cheese maker banging on EU's door
Date April 10, 2007
Even after fighting Brussels for 13 years, British-born Nancy Abeiderrahmane is convinced she will one day penetrate "fortress Europe" to sell her Mauritanian camel's cheese in the European Union.
In the office of her dairy on the outskirts of the capital Nouakchott, Abeiderrahmane shows off her different products: packages of milk from cows, goats and camels, yogurts and, last but not least, her specialty -- camel's milk cheese, which she says is a world first launched in 1994.
While many of the products have found a good market in this sparsely populated Muslim country in northwest Africa, the dairy, called Tiviski or Spring, has a public relations headache at home -- struggling to persuade the traditionally nomadic Mauritanians that camel's milk cheese is edible.
"There are no cheese eaters in Mauritania and in the region," explained Abeiderrahmane, who has adopted not only Mauritanian nationality but also the traditional Muslim veil worn by women here.
"For Mauritanians cheese is simply milk gone sour. They think it's revolting.
"Our product is rare, unique. We therefore want to send it to people who can and will buy it. Our goal is Europe," added the company chief, who is in her 50s and speaks Mauritania's official languages French and Arabic fluently.
Abeiderrahmane opened her dairy business in 1989 in this largely desert country that measures twice the size of former colonial power France but counts only 3.1 million inhabitants. Until then, Mauritania had been dependent on imported milk.
She soon started fishing for outlets for her camel's milk cheese, which resembles the soft French round cheese camembert but tastes more like goat's cheese.
Targeting the luxury market, she lined up potential clients at upscale European department stores like Harrods in London and Fauchon in Paris.
"Then I ran into Brussels, and hit up against the European regulations," Abeiderrahmane lamented.
Camel's milk is not covered by European food safety rules and Mauritania, where foot-and-mouth disease is rampant, does not figure on a tightly controlled list of countries authorized to export animal-based products to the now 27-member group.
But Abeiderrahmane, who holds a degree in nuclear physics and who moved here in 1968 after meeting her husband in France in 1968, is optimistic.
"We're continuing to work with Brussels. We hope that Mauritania will set up a laboratory to test animal health," she said, pointing out that the EU's decision not to admit animal products from Mauritania was due to the lack of such a laboratory.
From the nutritional viewpoint, there is much to vaunt this oddity. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says its vitamin C content is three times higher than that in cow's milk, and that it is packed with vitamin B and bodybuilding iron.
The business has also provided a good source of income for nomadic herdsmen, with nearly 1,000 cow, goat and camel breeders delivering milk to the Tiviski dairy every morning and evening.
"I am very touched by the multiple effects that a small agro-food unit can have. We distribute more than 700 million ouguiyas (2.1 million euros, 2.8 million US dollars) each year in the bush country," Abeiderrahmane said, saying the dairy pays 160 ouguiyas (0.46 euros, 0.61 US dollars) for a litre (quart) of camel's milk.
"To make a living by helping others to make their living is, from a moral standpoint, simply wonderful," she said.
Other relevant sources about camel cheese:
_http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/uaes-first-camel-cheese-to-hit-supermarket-shelves
_http://www.camelicious.ae/products_camelicious.php?pcat_id=2
_http://kylethatway.com/2012/01/29/when-all-is-lost-at-least-theres-camel-cheese/
