Madhukar Shukla, XLRI, Globalisation, Non-Tarriff Barriers, Mauritania, Camel Cheese

Why You Can't Buy Mauritanian Camel Cheese

In Europe1

With increasing liberalization, and lowering of trade barriers, there is an ever-widening market for the local produce of less developed countries. This case describes the barriers a Mauritanian company ran into when it tried to export to European Union.

Mauritania is a small nation in Northern Africa, bordering North Atlantic Ocean, and placed between Senegal and Western Sahara. It consists mostly of barren desert land, with just about 0.5% arable land. A poor country, with a GDP (adjusted to Purchasing Power Parity) of $5bn, an external debt of $1.6bn, it qualified for debt relief under the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) initiative in February 2000. Half the country's 2.8mn population of the country lives below the poverty line, and depends on agriculture and livestock for a living.

In 1989, a British-born engineer, Ms. Nancy Abeid Arahamane, realized that Mauritania had a lot of milk producing animals - camels, goats and cows - and still it imported huge quantities of milk to take care of its internal demands. Identifying an opportunity, as well to redress the problem, she got a French loan of 1mn Fr. Franks (about $141,000), and started a company, Tiviski (officially Laitière de Mauritanie) in Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott.

In just a few years, Tiviski grew and expanded its business. In the beginning, Nancy Arahamane got around 800 semi-nomads in a collective to supply camel milk to Tiviski for processing as well as for producing products from camel milk. The nomads were assured of standardized rates of 3 Fr. Franks (about 0.40$) per liter of milk. The company built centers in major towns to collect milk, keep it cold and then ship it to the dairy. Over years, Tiviski added cow and goat milk - and processed milk products, e.g., butter, cream, yogurt, chocolate, cheese, etc. - to its product range. Its sales tripled between 1993 and 2001. By 2001, the company had 14 milk products, and was producing 13,000 liters of milk per day.

The impact of her initiative was remarkable: Tiviski's successful venture raised the income levels of the herders in the collective, most of whom used to earn less than $1 a day (and lived as far as 300 km. from the capital, where traditional aid programs rarely reach); the value of cattle increased six-fold, and encouraged better care of animals; it also changed the landscape by increasing the land reserved for animal pasture and provides an outlet for the new rice agriculture of the Senegal river valley; it also helped improving Mauritania's balance of trade by making it more self-sufficient in milk, etc.

Tiviski was the first dairy in Africa (and second in the world) to pasteurize camel milk. The dairy operated state-of-the-art stainless steel continuous pasteurization equipment and packaged milk in gable-top cartons. The product quality was controlled in compliance with European standards.

One of the breakthrough products of Tiviski was cheese made from camel milk, which was also critical to its strategy. Milk business is seasonal, where in certain seasons, oversupply can overwhelm demand for fresh milk. Cheese, on the other hand, has a longer shelf life, and can help to smoothen the efficiencies.

Making cheese from camel milk, however, is not an easy task: firstly, because camel milk does not curdle easily when sour due to its unique proteins and fatty acid composition; and secondly, because making cheese requires damp, cool climate, which is not native to Mauritania. Nancy Arahamane, nevertheless, was able to develop a technique for making cheese with the help of FAO's Technical Co-operation Program, and started producing two variety of cheese. In 1993, Tiviski received the Rolex Award for Enterprise for its project for making cheese from camel milk.

Since Mauritanians don't eat cheese, whereas Europe is a large market for cheese, Tiviski decided to export camel cheese to Europe. The company achieved some international fame when they exhibited camel cheese in some of the European cheese fair, and won awards. After all, cheese made from camel milk has many unique properties, which makes it a superior product: not only it is ideally suited for people who are lactose intolerant, but also has 40% lower cholesterol than cow milk, low sugar and high mineral content, as well as higher vitamin C and protein intake. Soon a German importer offered to buy the entire camel cheese production from Tiviski.

But then she hit the roadblock!

She found that camel milk and it products are not covered in European agreements, and Mauritania does not feature in the list of countries (which was drawn in 1992) who are entitled to export animal products to European Union. To allow her to export to Europe, a special regulation (translated into 11 languages!!!) had to be issued and approved by the European Commission, Parliament and Council.

A few steps which EU took to include dromedary milk in the list of permitted imports to Europe, got held up due to the reorganization of the Commission itself. But more importantly, EU had other reservations about allowing imports of camel cheese and its products. Although the foot-and-mouth disease does not come from camel, EU expressed fears that camel milk can carry its germs, and therefore, insisted on high standards of quality control.

EU insisted that the milk had to be rigorously checked to ensure that it has been properly pasteurized. Since the usual testing procedures to check pasteurization are developed for cow milk, the camel milk does not respond to these tests. Tiviski has been partly financing studies in one of the research centers in Montpellier, France, to develop an alternative test procedure. While the research is said to be progressing, but publication of results, and then the certification of process will take its own time.

EU also insisted that to ensure standards of hygiene, camel had to be milked mechanically!!! - that, as Nicholas Stern, Chief Economist of World Bank observed, is "…bit of a challenge for the nomad of Mauritania. Essentially, what was a very promising export line in a very poor country was stopped on that kind of technicality. That is a non-tariff barrier."

In fact, even if Tiviski decides to do camel farming and invest in developing technology for milking them mechanically, there is a problem which nature has created. Unlike her bovine counterpart, the camel cow is temperamental by nature, and does not 'store' milk in its udder. If the camel cow does not like how she is being milked, she can stop producing milk and cut off the supply at will. On the other hand, a contented camel cow is known to lactate for more than 18 months.

And so, after almost 9 years when Tiviski got its European order for camel cheese in 1994, it is yet to get an entry into the European market.