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File Photo:buffalo | NANNING, April 22 (Xinhua) -- China may tap its rich buffalo milk
resources to meet the growing domestic demand for cheese, which has become so
popular on the Chinese dinner table thanks to the prevalence of western food.
China has 22.76 million buffaloes that together
produce 2.65 million tons of milk a year, says Zheng Hua, an expert attending
the ongoing fifth Asian Buffalo Congress in Nanning, south China's Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Buffalo milk contains more fat and protein than cow's
milk and therefore provides ideal raw material for cheese production, says
Zheng, a food engineering specialist.
"In Italy, almost all the buffalo milk is used to
produce cheese, including the world-famous Mozzarella," he said.
If China fully taps its own buffalo milk resources,
he said the country won't have to rely on imports to satisfy its domestic cheese
demand and can even enter the world cheese market with its own brands.
Experts say it is costly to import cheese. According
to Zheng, China is spending 10 percent of its milk industry revenue on cheese
imports every year.
"We need to develop our own cheese brands to reduce
production cost while providing quality products to the domestic market," said
Nong Tiandong, president of Guangxi Zhuangniu Buffalo Dairy Products Co.
Nong said his company has developed a new cheese
product out of local buffalo milk. "It'll be put on the nationwide market soon."
"Tucking into western food is a fad among the young
people," said Liu Juan, an office worker at a joint-venture company in Nanning.
"The popularity of western food has changed our eating habits, and we have
cheese even at our traditional morning tea."
Buffalo, or swamp buffalo, is a strong but tame
species living largely in tropical and subtropical regions. Ninety-seven percent
of the world's buffalos live in Asia.
The Chinese started to raise buffaloes at least 7,000
years ago,and the country has the world's third largest number of buffaloes
today. Enditem | 
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