Preparation and consumer acceptability tests of fermented camel milk in Kenya

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).