India Starts Tracing Churpi, The Himalayan Cheese The West Feeds Its Dogs
India has launched a traceability system for churpi, the rock-hard cheese of the eastern Himalaya whose largest foreign market is not the dinner table but the pet shop, where it sells as a long-lasting natural dog chew.
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| Image Source: @LalanSingh_1 on X |
Churpi is made across Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and the Tibetan plateau by draining and pressing cow or yak milk and drying the result until it is almost too hard to bite. Locally it is chewed slowly or softened into soups.
Abroad, demand is driven overwhelmingly by its durability in a dog’s mouth. Nepal, which has built an export industry on it, ships the overwhelming majority to the United States and earned about 22 million dollars from churpi in 2021-22, a figure close to what its tea exports brought in the same year. India’s own trade in the product is smaller and less documented, which is part of what traceability is meant to address.Singh also opened a microbiology laboratory at the Sikkim Milk Union under the National Programme for Dairy Development, with a second at Karfectar inaugurated remotely, to handle microbiological testing and quality assessment. He launched a range of fodder products developed by farmer producer organisations and handed registration certificates to five newly formed dairy cooperative societies.
Sikkim’s dairy sector has grown quickly from a small base. Milk production has risen 79 per cent over the past decade, from about 137,000 litres a day to 245,000, and the number of dairy cooperatives by 88 per cent, from 389 in 2014-15 to 733 in 2025-26. Daily supply to consumers has doubled to 56,000 litres.
The scale involved becomes clearer from a comparison the minister himself supplied. Holding up the city of Varanasi as an example of what intervention by the National Dairy Development Board can achieve, he said collection there had gone from 14,000 litres a day in 2022 to around 250,000, with the price paid to farmers rising from 28 to 30 rupees a litre to 42. That single city now collects roughly as much milk as the entire state of Sikkim produces.
Inaugurated the Microbiology Laboratory at the Sikkim Cooperative Milk Producers Union Limited, Tadong, today. Also distributed Certificates of Registration to dairy farmers under the Sikkim Cooperative Societies Act, 1978. These initiatives will strengthen the cooperative dairy sector, promote quality assurance and empower dairy farmers in Sikkim. @NDDB_Coop @Dept_of_AHD
— Rajiv Ranjan (Lalan) Singh (@LalanSingh_1) November 3, 2026
The harder constraint is the animals. At Mangan, in Sikkim’s north, local cattle yield an average of about three litres a day — a fraction of what a commercial dairy cow produces in Europe or North America. Singh announced that the federal government would fund a centre of excellence to conserve and improve the indigenous Siri breed, using advanced breeding methods including in-vitro fertilisation, and invited the state government to submit a formal proposal. The Siri is a zebu breed of Sikkim and the Darjeeling hills, historically valued for its strength as a plough animal on steep ground rather than for milk, and recorded at roughly 426 kg of milk per lactation. Research literature describes it as endangered.
The dairy board will also finance a full modernisation of the processing plant in Mangan district, following an approach used in Mizoram. Singh asked the board to deploy more staff to Sikkim to help the state become self-sufficient in milk production and procurement, and said dairy cooperatives were the mechanism for ensuring quality, preventing adulteration and securing fair prices for farmers.