The Flourishing Camel Milk Market and Concerns about Animal Welfare and Legislation

Abstract

The worldwide dromedary milk production has increased sharply since the beginning of this century due to prolonged shelf life, improved food-safety and perceived health benefits. Scientific confirmation of health claims will expand the market of dromedary milk further. As a result, more and more dromedaries will be bred for one purpose only: the highest possible milk production. However, intensive dromedary farming systems have consequences for animal welfare and may lead to genetic changes. Tighter regulations will be implemented to restrict commercialization of raw milk. Protocols controlling welfare of dromedaries and gene databases of milk-dromedaries will prevent negative consequences of intensive farming. In countries where dromedaries have only recently been introduced as production animal, legislators have limited expertise on this species. This is exemplified by an assessment on behalf of the Dutch government, recommending prohibiting keeping this species from 2024 onwards because the dromedary was deemed to be insufficiently domesticated. Implementation of this recommendation in Dutch law would have devastating effects on existing dromedary farms and could also pave the way for adopting similar measures in other European countries. In this paper it is shown that the Dutch assessment lacks scientific rigor. Awareness of breeders and legislators for the increasing knowledge about dromedaries and their products would strengthen the position of dromedaries as one of the most adapted and sustainable animals.

Changes in Fecal Microbiome Associated with Parity in Lactating Bactrian Camels

“…To date, the only tool for evaluating the welfare of camels includes a combination of individual, diet, and managemental measures, investigating individual camel health status [56]. Yet, there is still insufficient protocols for camels developed for assessing the animal health and welfare [57][58][59]. Thus, it is recommended that gastrointestinal microbiome with its parity should be taken into consideration when evaluating the welfare in lactating camels.…”

Domestication of the Dromedary Revisited and Its Consequences for Legislation as to Keeping Livestock or Pet Animals

“…Genetic ancestry background studies showed that selection for the racing ability trait from camel populations occurred over at least the past 200 years [ 22 ]. The resulting tameness after at least 4000 years of domestication [ 23 ] is anchored in the dromedary genome [ 12 ] and cannot be explained by habituation, as we showed earlier [ 4 ].…”

“…Subsequently, this neural crest hypofunction produces unselected by-products, such as morphological changes [ 8 , 9 ]. The thyroid hypothesis (THH) refers to an alteration in the expression of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine (T3) and its precursor tetraiodo-thyronine (T4), which have key roles in postnatal and juvenile development, are involved in different pathways and, i.a., responsible for growth and maturation [ 4 , 8 , 11 ]. In dromedaries, genomic signals were found for both hypotheses [ 12 ].…”

“…Nowadays, this happens using, among others, the principles of the CD-ROM archive [ 27 ]. The late breeding age (~4 years), and the long gestation (~13 months) and weaning (~9 months) [ 4 ] as well as the pastoralist/extensive production system have prevented breeders from accurately recording the improvement of their breeds in studbooks, unlike breeders of other domesticated animals with much shorter breeding age, gestation and weaning times [ 27 , 28 ].…”

“…In a previous publication, we provided numerous science-based arguments that the domestication of the dromedary is in an advanced stage [ 4 ]. Here, we assess the domestication stage of the dromedary from a slightly different angle using the same criteria that were formulated by the advisory committee that was responsible for the selection process in the Netherlands.…”