I’ve been so busy looking at cashew cheddar, hemp Parmesan and avocado ice cream that I didn’t notice the camel milk in a local co-op until a friend nudged me. Yes, camel milk has arrived. A website called Wellness Mama touts the stuff as a one-stop fix for everything from allergies to autism.
The Camel Milk Association must be under some social and legal pressure, though. They’ve posted a fact sheet about their members’ right of association on their website.
One camel milk vendor, Meadow Ridge Farm, calls itself a private membership club, citing the Weston A. Price Foundation as prescribing the raw-milk tradition to which they adhere.
But raw, unpasteurized milk, sought by many camel milk devotees, is generally prohibited in the United States and Europe. And camel milk has only recently been accepted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a commercial product.
Desert Farms, an online sales hub, attempts to make camel milk look eco-friendly, with a particular reference to the Amish suppliers.
But camel farming is just another example of the traffic in introduced species. Plus, it comes with methane emissions. Although these emissions might be lighter than those of cows and other ruminants, they are significant. Note that commercially exploited camels and their descendants have been blamed for a significant portion of Australian methane.
The Desert Farms website also claims that the suppliers spend a lot of time with their camels, that the smallest supplier owns just two camels, and that these suppliers’ camels are just the happiest in all the world.
The pink camel in the room here is a baby camel. Where does a baby camel go after being conceived and born to induce lactation? A free-roaming baby camel is suckled for more than a year.
The Desert Farms Frequently Asked Questions page doesn’t say a word about the offspring. It does include the bizarre question Is Camel Milk Vegan? Answer: “No, Desert Farms camel milk is an animal product. Animal lovers can rejoice that our camels are treated well and cherished by each family farm!”
The vendors are clearly well versed in pretending that the camels whose milk they usurp endorse this business model. Hogwash.
In any case, what makes up happiness in the world of camels is none of our business. These beings are so wonderfully adapted to the desert habitats in which they evolved that they have extra eyelids for removing grains of sand. Camels have their own history without us, spanning more than 40 million years.
Jeffrey Mousssaieff Masson writes in Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras:
An Arab proverb says that a foal knows the well where her mother came to drink before she gave birth to her. It is not clear how they can find their own home range again over vast stretches of trackless desert, but they do.
Does your local health food shop or co-op carry camel milk? If so (or if not), conversation could make a difference and spare new camels from being brought into a life of confinement.
A search on the Desert Farms store locator page brought up three retail sellers within 25 miles of me:
- Martindale’s Natural Market
1172 Baltimore Pike
Springfield, Pennsylvania 19064, United States
-
8424 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118, United States
-
786 Haddon Ave
Collingswood, New Jersey 08108, United States1.856.854.4468
One encouraging factor is the limited number of camel milk outlets on the map. This fledgling trend should be vulnerable to sound critique.
Some readers might point out that making a special case of camels leaves the trade in cows, goats and others unchallenged. I’m not suggesting that we advocate solely for camels; nothing prevents us from admonishing animal agribusiness generally, including when discussing camel milk. Camels as a community can be defended, and the broader questions about why we take any other animals’ milk can come to the fore.
I thank Linda Stein for inspiring this post.
Vegan Place 
Thank you Lee. This is disappointing news; as if camels werent already being exploited enough. I think your comments about possible concern over this being a ” single-issue” action were well- taken. An opposition to the idea of camels’ milk being consumed by anyone other than baby camels opens up a discussion that logically includes our exploitation of the other animals we mindlessly use for our consumption. To my mind an example of a single- issue campaign would be the campaigns against ” puppy mills”- single issue. Instead,the efforts/ resources should be used to eliminate any breeding of dogs; which then leads into the questioning of any breeding of ” domesticated” animals.
Thank you.
Thank you for this information. I had no idea there was a market in the US for this. I see it described in some stores as “frozen.” Imagine the energy it takes to ship and keep frozen camel’s milk to stock stores thousands of miles away- including Hawaii! I’ll share this.
Interesting additional points on the environmental absurdity of this, Will. Thanks for reading and sharing the post. I’d be interested in any follow-up you’d wish to share here.