Peter Jackson column

Nov 16 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

Desert Orchid's sad demise not only makes me reflect on the career of a great horse, but also on the economic importance of animals.

This great racehorse obviously had huge influence on the personal fortunes of millions - of those who backed him and on those who backed his rivals - but the economic role of most other animals is hardly as glamorous or epoch-making.

The vast majority of beasts with an economic role are exploited, die and are then forgotten, frequently after first being eaten.

But we are moving into a more sensitive - or sentimental - age, in which there is increasing demand that, even if animals are to be used for our economic benefit, we should not, in the process, be so…well… beastly to them.

Ethical investment is a growing field, appealing, I suspect, not primarily to those who wish to avoid investing their money in pornography, arms dealing or tobacco, but rather in those companies which use animal testing. But that still leaves a vast range of ways of making money out of animals, with new ways seemingly being dreamed up all the time.

Take, for example, the camel breeders of Rajasthan.

They are taking part in a two-year project in this Indian state to revive their industry by marketing camel milk to hotels and tourists for healthy low calorie ice cream and tea and coffee.

It is claimed that the camel milk has three times as much vitamin C as cow's milk, is rich in iron, unsaturated fatty acids and vitamin B and reduces blood sugar level in diabetes sufferers.

And if sales of the ice cream - available in saffron pistachio and strawberry vanilla - take off, the 10-year, 50% decline in the state's camel population could be reversed.

Even more ingenious is the use to which a Thai zoo is putting its pandas. It has found a way of using their dung to make paper for souvenirs.

A pair of pandas are fed chopped bamboo and obligingly excrete about 50lb of bamboo pulp every day.

The zoo then converts the pulp into paper, from which is makes fans, greeting cards, key chains and book marks, a nice little earner which brings in about £4,300 a year.

Certainly, where there's muck there's brass.