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. Image Source: @LalanSingh_1 on X The initiative was inaugurated in Gangtok on Tuesday by Rajiv Ranjan Singh, the union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, at a programme held by the Sikkim Milk Union. The ministry said the system was intended to strengthen traceability and improve the product’s identity and marketability — the documentation that regulated import markets require before they will take a food product in volume. 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 a...