Preparation and consumer acceptability tests of fermented camel milk in Kenya

Abstract

There are estimated to be 600000 camels (Camelus dromedarius) in Kenya (Wandera, 1985). Almost 80% of these are kept by pastoral tribes living in arid areas in eastern and north-eastern parts of the country. In these regions, camels are important dairy animals. A camel in north-east Kenya can be expected to yield about 4 kg milk daily as compared with 0·5–1·5 kg for a cow in the same area. Most of the camel milk is consumed in the form of fermented milk. The milk is allowed to ferment naturally at ambient temperature and without prior heat treatment until it turns sour. The resulting fermented camel milk is known as Susa. Due to the spontaneous nature of the fermentation, this traditional method results in a product with varying taste and flavour and is often of poor hygienic quality, in addition, because of the limited scale of production, the product can be sold only in the immediate vicinity of the herd. For production of fermented milk under controlled conditions, thermophilic or mesophilic lactic acid cultures are normally used. In warm countries, mesophilic lactic cultured milk offers some advantages, as it can be incubated at ambient temperature (20–30 °C) and the fermentation stops at 1–1·2% lactic acid, eliminating the need for cooling to stop further souring as occurs in the case of yoghurt (Kurwijila, 1980).

Compositional, technological and nutritional aspects of dromedary camel milk

“…Dromedary camel milk include soft cheese (El-Zubeir & Jabreel, 2008;Inayat, Arain, Khaskheli, & Malik, 2003;Mehaia, 1993Mehaia, , 2006, fermented milk (Elayan, Sulieman, & Saleh, 2008;Farah, Streiff, & Bachmann, 1990), yoghurt (Hashim, Khalil, & Habib, 2008), ice cream (Abu-Lehia, Al-Mohiezea, & El-Behry, 1989) and butter (Farah, Streiff, & Bachmann, 1989;Rüegg & Farah, 1991).…”

Effects of exopolysaccharide-producing starter cultures on physicochemical, rheological and sensory properties of fermented camel and #8217;s milk

“…Recently, little work dealt with manufacturing of camel milk products, such as cheese (Mehaia, 1994;Ibrahim, 2009;Konuspayeva et al, 2014), butter (Fatah et al, 1989;Berhe et al, 2013), ice cream (Abu- Lehia, 1989) and fermented camel milk (Farah et al, 1990;Konuspayeva and Faye, 2011;Ibrahim, 2013) has been reported.…”

Prevalence of bovine tuberculosis in dromedary camels and awareness of pastoralists about its zoonotic importance in Eastern Ethiopia

“…Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License of milk, meat, draught power and transportation for the pastoralists (Bekele, 1999). Zoonotic infections, transmissible between humans and animals, are closely associated with pastoralists, because of their close contacts with their domesticated animals (Macpherson, 1995;Schelling et al, 2003;Li et al, 2005) and habit of raw camel milk consumption (Farah et al, 1990;Radwanet al, 1992;Younan, 2004).…”

“…TB lymphadenitis in cervical lymph nodes (TBLN) accounts for ≈33% of all new cases in the country (WHO, 2011), raising the possibility of orally acquired infection. Thus the zoonotic risk arising from dromedary camel milk should be considered, because camel milk is mostly consumed in its raw state (Farah et al, 1990;Radwan et al, 1992;Younan, 2004).…”