SafariLands.org: Lifestyle: Camel milk could be key to beauty

camel milk is pure nectar, slightly saltier than cows, milk

"It does give you a nice complexion," says British-born Abeiderrahmane, who in 1989 opened Africa's first commercial camel milk dairy, now called Tiviski, in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott.

With the dairy already producing a range of camel; cow and goat milk products in a nation where nomadic livestock rearing is a way of life, the Spanish-trained engineer is now looking at the possibility of making camel milk cosmetics.

"We would make creams and soaps," said Abeiderrahmane, who has lived in Mauritania for 30 years and is a Citizen of the former French colony lying on the Sahara's western edge.

"I'm thinking very up market," she added.

Cleopatra said to bathe in the stuff Recalling that Egypt's Queen Cleopatra, a fabled beauty, was said to bathe daily in camel's milk, she said Mauritanian Moorish women still traditionally drank large quantities of this milk to maintain a pale, clear complexion.

"It's a cleaning stuff, it's good for your arteries, it's a diuretic," Abeiderrahmane said.

While stressing that simply drinking camel milk was already an excellent beauty treatment, she said its fat could be transformed into lotions and creams.
A handful of entrepreneurs in the world already made such products, although Abeiderrahmane, an acknowledged expert on camel milk, said she would need to acquire the technical know-how to set up a cosmetics plant at her Nouakchott dairy.

"There is nobody in 600 miles who makes cosmetics," she said, gesturing to the edge of the dusty Mauritanian capital, where rolling sand dunes begin where the buildings end.

Smelly, but clean Just a few kilometres away on a sandy roadside, Mauritanian herders, their craggy, weather-beaten faces swathed in turbans, milk a herd of baying, moaning camels. "They've all got names - this one's Fatou, that one there is Mariam," said Mohamed Sidi, 40, one of the herders.

They feed the females a hash of cereals and peanuts mixed with water before milking. It takes two people to milk a standing camel, one holding the bowl on one side and the other tweaking the teats of the udder on the other side.

The milker allows the female camel's calf to start suckling, to draw down the milk, and then pushes it away.

Dry camel droppings scatter the sand underfoot and there is a rank, acrid smell of camel urine in the air.

Abeiderrahmane, while admitting camels can be smelly, indignantly denies they are dirty.

"The camel itself is a fussy animal... it has few germs, few diseases, it's a very clean animal," she says.
Fresh from the udder, camel milk is topped by a thick white froth. It tastes different than cow milk - less fatty and sometimes a bit saltier - and its chemical composition is very different.

"It's quite weird stuff, but absolutely exquisite." said Abeiderrahmane, who drinks a carton a day at least.

"it's very light, its full of vitamins and minerals it's got a lot of vitamin C," she said.
Camel milk chocolate
Because camel milk does not curdle easily and is very difficult to skim, it does not yield the same range of products, like ice cream and yoghurt, one can obtain from cow's milk.

But the Tiviski dairy, whose name means "spring" in local Arabic, produces a soft camel milk cheese, sold under the brand name Caravane, but dubbed Camelbert by some fans, after French Camembert. "We're the only people in the world to make it," Abeiderrahmane said.

Camel milk:

What possible importance can camel milk have in the year 1981 in a world beset with a multitude of problems? The answer to this is clear when we consider that one of the biggest problems confronting mankind today is malnourishment. Camel milk can certainly play a far more important role in the prevention of malnutrition than it does today. Growing and raising foodstuffs for the rapidly increasing human population is especially precarious in the hot and arid zones of the world - the very areas where the camel is one of the few animals not only to survive, but also to benefit man.

Before presenting data on milk production, both quantity and quality, one must consider in detail all the relevant information about the camel in order to ascertain the full value that this animal can play in human nutrition.

Camels, or the family of camels, the Camelidae, are found throughout the world and all camels will be mentioned when possible; however, this report deals mainly with the one-humped dromedary, which is found in the desert and semi-desert areas.

Milk is the main food obtained from a herd of camels, (Dahl, 1979). The one-humped camel was domesticated about 3000 B.C.E. in southern Arabia (Bullet, 1975), mainly for its meat and milk (Epstein, 1971). The camels were, and still are, valued as riding, baggade and work animals, as well as providers of hair and hides. In arid zones the camel is a better provider of food than the cow, which is severely affected by the heat, scarcity of water and feed (Sweet, 1965).

Camels originated in North America when the land masses were still joined (Leuner, 1963). These animals were no larger than hares. Here they remained from the upper Eocene throughout the Tertiary period, into the Pleistocene epoch, a period of 40 million years. Continued evolution produced the very large American camels. From North America, meanwhile, the animals migrated to other parts of the world, finally disappearing from their original area. The various types and breeds in the camel family are probably a result of evolutionary adaptation to the various environments to which the animals were exposed.

Some of the camels migrated to the deserts and semi-deserts of northern Africa and the Middle East. Remains of camels have been found in old Palestine, dating to 1800 B.C.E. Field (1979) considered that further migration of camels in Africa was prevented by their susceptibility to tsetseborne trypanosomiasis. However, the camel has been incriminated as the probable host which became infected with Trypanosoma brucei in the northern tsetse areas and spread the infection which evolved to mechanically-transmitted T. evansi, throughout northern Africa into Asia. These camels have one-hump and long spindly legs.

The two-humped camel, the Bactrian, was domesticated on the border of Iran and Turkmenistan and spread to an area bordered by the Crimea, southern Siberia, Mongolia and China. These animals are stockier than the dromedary and covered by a thicker wool.

The new-world Camelidae are smaller versions of the camels and live in the heights of the mountains in South America.

All the members of the camel family are found in the order of the Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates); suborder: Tylopoda (pad-footed); family: Camelidae. The old-world genus is the Camelus, having the two species of the Bactrianus (two-humped) and Dromedarius (one-humped). The new-world genus of the Lama has three species, while the genus of Vicugna has only one species.

Although they chew cud, camels differ from true ruminants in a few anatomical features (Cloudley-Thompson, 1969). Adult camels have two incisor teeth in their upper jaws; they lack an omasum, the third stomach division of the ruminants, which is considered the water reabsorbing portion of the stomach; they have no gallbladder; and the hooves have been reduced to claw-like toes, projecting beyond the pads. In India, camel meat is not eaten by the Hindus (Simoons, 1961), nor by the Christian Copts of Egypt, Zoroastrians of Iran, Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, Nosaioris of Syria, Ethiopians of Christian Faith nor in Israel the camel is considered as being unsuitable as a source of meat.

Within the arid regions the camel-breeding tribes have maintained a dominant position over other societies by virtue of their ability to exploit the often poor grazing ranges (Sweet, 1965). Camel-owning tribes are continually on the move, looking for grazing and water for their animals (Elamin, 1979). They can wander over 1 000 km in a season. The distance covered depends on the availability of water and feed. With rapidly expanding urbanization, these wanderings are causing clashes between cultures and destroying the grazing areas of the camels.

Because of its importance as a means of survival for the desert dwellers, the camel often plays an important role in the social and cultural heritage of the tribes. For instance, in various cultures (Hartley, 1979) ownership of a camel begins when a male child is born. He is presented with a femalecalf. The child's umbilical cord is placed in a sac and tied around the neck of the camel. In other societies the camel is used for attracting wives or paying off “criminal” offences (Dickson, 1951).

Camels have been introduced by man into various parts of the world, mainly as baggage animals for the arid zones of the country. This happened in Australia, where the camels escaped into the wild and are now considered vermin (McKnight, 1969). In Italy, Spain, South Africa and Texas in the USA camels were also introduced as pack animals, but they soon disappeared. Camels were introduced into the Canary Islands from Morocco in 1402 (Buillet, 1975), where they are still in use in agriculture and as beasts of burden.

In Sudan (El-Amin, 1979) there is at present one of the largest populations of one-humped camels in the world. They are found mainly in the arid and semi-arid areas of the country, where the average rainfall is less than 350 mm per year.

In the Horn of Africa (Hartley, 1979) the camel is found in the arid and semi-arid rangelands in Ethiopia, Djibuti, Somalia and Kenya. In these areas water supplies range from abundant in the riverine areas, to extreme aridity. In these areas the inhabitants are mainly pastoral and the camels roam according to the range conditions. In the dry season the camels are watered once every 10–20 days, compared with every 3–8 days for sheep and goats and every 2–3 days for cattle. The movement of the camels away from the living centres is divided primarily into far-moving dry herds and the closer-by milch animals.

THE CITIZEN Saturday, 7 April, 2007