Camel milk: Your questions answered

SN ART Camel milk: Your questions answered

Calamunnda Camel Farm is located in Perth and does all things camel-related, but aside from being a tourist hotspot, Chris O'Hara is educating Australians about the benefits of camel milk.

What's the difference between camel and cattle milk?
Camel milk has similar chemical characteristics to cattle milk. The period of lactation is longer than cattle, however the daily production is lower. The advantage of Camels is that in arid or marginal areas, the Camel needs little or no supplementation for milk production as verses full supplementary feeding and husbandry for cattle. Milk is either consumed fresh or used to produce yoghurt or cheese.

Is it safe?
I believe my milk is completely safe. I drink it personally every day

What are the effects?
It has changed the way that my body reacts. Personally I have skin elasticity in my 60 plus years of age now that I didn’t have before. I went through the same process that everybody else does when they first start camel milk – it will detox you. Taken slowly your body will eject all the toxins in your body and the camel milk will replace the wholefoods that your body is lacking. It will help build your gut flora it’ll build your immune system.

Why is the milk so expensive?
In Australia camel milk is extremely expensive for the production cost in itself and finding volume comparison to the wages and the regulations and the health and the compliance issues that we have to be faced with

Why camel milk?
At this particular point have to prove to the health industry and the health department and the regulators that raw Australian camel milk is beneficial and is of greater or better comparison than a pasteurised product."

You said raw, unpasteurized camel milk is better than pasteurized cows milk?
Yes that is correct, the testing that we have down with our state laboratories here in Western Australia and through independent laboratories here in western Australia have indicated that the results that we are getting from a raw product is significantly lower in the bacteria count to points where we are getting zero on for example like e-coli and salmonella detected in our process um and significantly lower below pasteurized cow milk levels.

Are you breaking the rules?
I don’t think we are breaking the rules, we are rewriting the rules by having provable data, having proven concept, having compliance in areas of hygiene and food safety I want people to be aware of what we have out here, I want to change what people perceive about camels, camel milk and the product.

Why aren’t health authorities in Australia in agreement?
Good question. The chance to have a commercially viable industry involving camels in Australia exists today, it has taken me over 25 years to get to this stage and it is time that we took it and put it out there and got a groundswell of people to accept the fact that the research is there, this is not about tuberculosis, this is not about unsafe food, ecoli, salmonella, this is about a superfood that is beneficial to our metabolism

For more about Calamunnda, go to their website here.

You can also find more information and order milk at Camel Milk Australia, a new website launched by Hanna Purss, from Camels for Drought Relief..

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