{"id":1665,"date":"2024-06-03T07:57:38","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T05:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2024-06-03T07:57:38","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T05:57:38","slug":"ethical-camel-dairying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ilse-koehler-rollefson.com\/?p=1665","title":{"rendered":"Ethical Camel Dairying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Camel milk is a gift of the DESERT, and it does not make ecological sense to produce it in industrial systems.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The current buzz around camel milk causes a rush of people to enter the emerging camel dairy sector in the belief that it is a lucrative business. This is not necessarily beneficial for camels – nor does it even generate the expected profits – as these new entrants automatically follow the model provided by cow dairies: they search for camels with the best possible yields, confine them somewhere, buy feed, and invest in a milking parlour, with the intent of maximising production. Such industrial scale camel dairies <\/a> are springing up in oil-rich Arab countries and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping them in confinement subverts the nature and biology of camels – long-legged creatures that have evolved in the most sparsely vegetated environments and are designed to cover huge distances daily to find enough forage to satisfy their nutritional needs under these frugal conditions. We know from the now almost forgotten studies conducted<\/a> by German biologists Birgit D\u00f6rges and J\u00fcrgen Heuck in the 1980s and early 2000s, that feral camels in Australia routinely walk up to 70 km per day. Another adaptation of camels to a desert environment is their slow reproduction with a calving interval of two years in most places (it can be less in the Horn of Africa because of two rainy seasons). The camel’s digestive system is aimed at metabolizing extremely thorny, fibrous, salty plants and that is what these animals thrive on and where their ecological advantages lie: producing food in drylands, and without use of fertilizers and fossil fuels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Camels in Kutch in India where forage plants are quite salty.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Coupled with their tolerance of high ambient temperatures, their ability to cope with droughts, and their congenial disposition, camels are evolution’s gift to humanity and a priceless asset in light of the record temperatures that the Earth is currently experiencing in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year we are celebrating the International Year of Camelids<\/a>, for which the FAO has picked the official slogan the heroes of deserts and highlands that nourish people and culture<\/em>. Camelids are certainly remarkable, but even bigger heroes are the people that have been stewarding them for thousands of years in extremely inhospitable environments, who have adapted their ways of life to the needs of their camel herds, rather than dominating them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/umap.openstreetmap.fr\/en\/map\/world-map-of-camelids_1005278#3\/11.87\/0.00<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is from these societies that we can learn how to keep camels in a way that is basically ethical and long-term sustainable: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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