This actually sounds pretty durned good.
Herders Hope Camel Cheese Rivals Cheddar
By EDWARD HARRIS
The Associated Press
Friday, November 14, 2003; 2:14 PM
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - Herd boys tug at the udders of indifferent camels, loosing the raw material for a unique, creamy comestible this desert nation's growers hope to place alongside of Roquefort and Cheddar on the world's crackers: Camel cheese.
If foreigners bite, camel cheese exports would put sorely needed cash in the robes of this Arab-dominated West African nation's nomads, helping them to modernize herding practices.
Camel cheese has big humps to clear to reach mouths abroad, though: European Union and American import and health regulations demand costly testing that impoverished Mauritania, like most other African nations, is unable to provide.
""If the Europeans buy that cheese, our milk production will skyrocket. We'll get the technology - better than the money - like the right medicines. Then our herds will really grow," says herder Tati Ould Mohamed, watching as an orange bucket beneath one of his 100 camels fills with hot, frothy milk.
"But the product can't be sold overseas. And that's causing problems," says Mohamed, one of 1,000 herdsmen selling milk to Tiviski SARL, touted here as the world's only camel-cheese factory.
Nancy Abeiderrahmane, the British founder of Tiviski, has endured sun-baked landscapes and hard-bitten bureaucrats in a decades-long campaign to ship abroad the milk and cheese of camels - an animal most associate with Bedouins, not Brie.
When Abeiderrahmane moved to Mauritania in 1970, many of the country's 2.9 million people still lived the herdsman's life, but were increasingly buying modern products.
"I thought it was absurd that they had all of these dairy animals and were importing all of this ultra-pasteurized milk," the 56-year-old Briton says. "I so missed fresh milk. And I love camel's milk; it's exquisite."
So, with US$250,000, she launched her company in 1987. It started with packaged camel milk - less cloying in the mouth than cow milk. Production quickly branched into yogurt and creme fraiche.
"The spirit of enterprise is weird and it all made perfect sense at the time," Abeiderrahmane says.
Over the years, she grew ever-more intrigued by the idea of camel cheese.
Camel milk doesn't curdle naturally, making production difficult. But by October 1994, with the help of a French professor, Abeiderrahmane cooked up a working technique.
The British national soon had small loaves of cheese - tasting like goat cheese, but closer in spreadability and form to a square of Brie or Camembert - but no local market.
"Mauritanians don't eat cheese because they don't know it and don't like the taste of decaying milk, which is what cheese is, after all," she says.
"So we made it for the European market, this wonderful cheese with this handsome packaging."
With little idea of what international trade regulators had in store, she traveled overseas, finding interest from high-end emporiums including Paris's Fauchon and Harrods of London, she says.
But trade regulators in Brussels, EU headquarters, said the cheese contravened import rules.
"They were amused and wanted to help us, but the bureaucracy is huge," Abeiderrahmane says.
"At first they said it wasn't milk, because it wasn't the secretion of cows, sheep, ewes, or buffalos" as defined by EU laws, she says, although that hurdle fell to her lobbying efforts.
There are bigger obstacles: Mauritania has yet to show it has eradicated foot and mouth disease - which swept Europe in past years, and which the United States also guards against.
It lacks proper testing facilities to prove its products safe for human consumption.
"It may take another 7 or 8 or 9 years," Abeiderrahmane says. "But we must face the fact that Europe doesn't need more cheese - camel or ostrich."
In fact, a French restaurateur in Mauritania capital says, camel fromage can compete with the big cheeses.
"A good red wine, a fine Bordeaux - this cheese can stand up to whatever you drink with it," says Patrick Peri, owner of Nouakchott's Le Mediterraneen. "I'm sure that in France, you could sell it in gourmet boutiques in the small towns," says Peri, who serves the cheese pan-friend with a pinch of herbs.
Tiviski now boasts 240 employees, a gleaming factory of stainless-steel urns and pipes, and 2002 sales of US5 million. The company produces only a small amount of the Caravane cheese, packaged in small brown boxes, and sold locally.
Abeiderrahmane estimates she could ramp up cheese production to 240 kilos (528 pounds) daily, if the foreign markets were there.
For herders like Mohamed, that would be good news.
His herd, like many, has dwindled in the face of drought and development. Mohamed says his herd decreased by 150 last year.
With increased milk sales, he could use the cash to vaccinate his herd and stock up against another deadly drought.
"It's good for the country," Abeiderrahmane says of Mauritania's cheese ambitions. "I'm not depriving anyone of anything - except maybe some baby camels a bit of milk."
© 2003 The Associated Press
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