Camel milk latest entry in domestic dairy alternatives race

If you're fed up with cow milk, goat milk or soy milk, try something new - camel milk, the latest milk alternative.

Before dawn, Sangdeg, 45, carries a flashlight in one hand, a bucket in the other, and walks into a camel pen in the desert of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

"Tujibuly," calls the camel farmer from Alxa Right Banner, a major farming base for Bactrian camels. He gently calls the name of a 9-year-old female Bactrian camel, a type of double-humped camel.

Tujibuly steps out of the camel crowd. It is time for Sangdeg's milking work to begin.

For camel farmers like Sangdeg in Inner Mongolia, camels are not only used to carry tourists but also to produce milk, one of the region's emerging and booming industries.

"My family used to raise camels only for their fur and meat. Their milk was only used to feed their young," said Sangdeg, whose family has raised camels for generations.

Things changed earlier this year. He joined many camel farmers and started selling raw camel milk to a local processing plant to earn extra money.

At midnight each day, he and other milkers spend around two hours milking 25 female camels at his home. Then he drives the fresh milk to the company named Shamozhishen, meaning god of the desert in English.

"The milk produced by each camel earns me around 6,000 yuan ($869) a year, while its fur earns only several hundred yuan," Sangdeg said.

Established in 2014, Shamozhishen is the largest camel milk processor in Alxa Right Banner, and the first of its kind in the autonomous region.

In the company's plants, raw milk is made into processed milk, milk powder, milk soap, and skincare products. The products are sold to customers across the country by more than 600 agents.

Ran Qiwei, manager of the company, said his plant is planning to develop pharmaceutical products by extracting insulin from camel milk.

"Camel milk is nutritious and helps to strengthen people's immune systems," said Zhang Wenbin, deputy director of the Inner Mongolia Institute of Camel Research, an institute focusing on camel genomics and pharmaceutics.

"Camel milk also caters to the more adventurous customers who want to try a different kind of milk," Zhang said.

With the rise of the camel milk industry, the number of camels in Alxa League, which administers Alxa Right Banner, surged from around 50,000 in 2003 to about 120,000 last year, accounting for one-third of the country's total, according to local statistics.

But this is still far from enough.

"Our plant has a production line that can process 20 metric tons of camel milk every day. The amount of raw camel milk falls far short of what we need," Ran said.

The gap is expected to narrow thanks to increasing scientific research on camels.

Xinhua

(China Daily 12/12/2018 page17)