Buffalo Milk
Nowadays that Chinese milk powder has got into food products, there is growing concern in consumers about food safety, a concern well justified. Thus nowadays we have come to discuss the importance of quality milk and are rediscovering the milk producing animals other than cows.
Compared to cow's milk, buffalo milk contains less water, more total dry substance, more fats, proteins and lactose. And therefore in milk industry it is preferred to cow's milk for its highly nutricious nature. In Turkey buffalo milk constitutes a valuable input in the production of all sorts of dairy foods: cheeses, milk cream, milk-based desserts, yogurt, ayran and butter.
Cattle breeding for milk production went under a transformation in years: it became more and more intensive. Meanwhile, buffaloes being of a more sturdy nature, able to endure harsher environment than cows are able to, having a wilder "free spirit" and a preference towards wet lands, and other economic factors (for instance, they can be fed on rough feed), buffalo breeding in Turkey has continued extensively in open lands, usually by small family enterprises. Unfortunately, various factors like the destruction of natural wet lands cause the buffalo population in our country to decline, contrary to the general trend in other parts of the world.
| Buffalo population changes in years: | ||
| 1982 | 2005 | |
| Worldwide | 128.000.000 | 173.000.000 |
| Turkey | 1.000.000 | 105.000 |
Accorindg to 1993 data, buffalo milk had a % 1.3 share in total milk produce; today that share is even smaller and the price of buffalo milk soared up to three times that of the cow's milk because of the supply-demand imbalance. Though not as high as in Turkey, consumers in other countries also pay more more buffalo milk that cow's milk. The reason for this no doubt lies under the fact that the demand increases for safe dairy products obtained without the now widely used synthetic, chemical and hormonal substances in breeding.
More than % 5 of the total milk produced all over the world comes from buffaloes. % 95 of the buffalo population lives in Asia, with India as the largest producer of buffalo milk in the world. The famous Italian mozzarella is also made from buffalo milk.
