Camel cheese may be next big thing

? Herd boys tug at camels’ udders, loosing the raw material for a unique, creamy cheese this desert nation’s growers hope to place alongside Roquefort and cheddar on the world’s crackers.

If foreigners bite, camel cheese exports could put sorely needed cash in the robes of this West African nation’s nomads, helping them to modernize herding practices.

But there are hurdles: European Union and American import and health regulations demand costly testing impoverished Mauritania, like most 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 filled with 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 waged a decadeslong campaign to export the milk and cheese of camels — animals more associated with Bedouin herders than brie.

When Abeiderrahmane moved to Mauritania in 1970, many of the country’s 2.9 million people lived as herdsmen, but were increasingly consuming imported milk and other processed foods.

“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 $250,000, she launched her company in 1987.

A shop owner displays a box of Mauritanian camel cheese at the Tiviski shop in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. Camel cheese exports would bring much-needed money to this mostly Arab nation, but international regulations stand in the way.

But trade regulators in Brussels, the EU headquarters, said her cheese contravened import rules.

“They were amused and wanted to help us, but the bureaucracy is huge,” Abeiderrahmane says.

Mauritania has yet to show it has eradicated foot and mouth disease, which has swept Europe in recent years and which the United States also guards against.

It also lacks testing facilities to prove its products are safe for human consumption.

“It may take another seven or eight or nine years,” Abeiderrahmane concedes.

A French restaurateur in the Mauritania capital says he is convinced there is an overseas market for camel cheese.

“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.