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| India-Pakistan |
| Bihar promoting rat meat! |
| 2008-08-19 |
| By Maneka Gandhi For years now, I have been advising people not to eat meat. Apart from all the other things wrong with it, very few people know which animal has been killed for its meat, its state of health when it was killed (45 per cent of all animals killed in slaughterhouses and 70 per cent of all chickens have gangrene when they are killed) and the way in which it is killed. In a report of the main slaughterhouse in India, Idgah in Delhi — placed before the Supreme Court — it was shown how the animals were cut with rusty blades, urinated and defecated on and left in pools of other animals. But this article is not about the filth in meat that no amount of boiling can take out (can you boil gangrene or human faeces out?) It is about the type of meat you eat. The Bihar Government has just announced that it will promote rat meat. This is one State that has been looted so systematically and ruthlessly for the last 15 years that it has no middle class or rich people left at all. In 15 years of Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav's misrule, no roads were built, no hospitals or schools made, every single industry fled, most shops closed down. Even the politicians became scroungers! The only people who got rich were the criminals and mafia dons with the help of Mr Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi whom he made proxy Chief Minister. The new Government — already crippled with huge floods and an inefficient administration — is now, looking for quick fixes to bring prosperity. For a while they jumped enthusiastically into smuggling cows out to Bangladesh to be killed for meat. But now there are very few cattle left and the farmers dependant on them for ploughing are even more destitute. So now what better than the only natural resource left — rats Rats are eaten in Bihar by a community named Musahars or Bhuyans who are considered the 'lowest' on the social ladder. Now the Government of Bihar has announced on August 9 that they have a panacea to everything — people will be encouraged to eat rats, the meat will be introduced formally into all eateries from roadside dhabas right up to five star hotels and will occupy a place on the menu — rat burgers, rat tail pasta, baby rat keema (I am not joking). This will solve the following problems: First, rats eat more than 50 per cent of the grains in farms and badly-kept Government godowns. If these are caught, then the grains will be saved. Second, the community of Musahars will be socially rehabilitated and will become rich. And third, everybody will have a source of protein. This will solve the global food crisis. India has, according to the bureaucrats who have no doubt done a population count with NGOs of their relatives and charged the World Bank for the same, eight billion rats — seven for each Indian. Bihar's Social Welfare Department secretary Vijay Prakash was quoted in The Statesman as saying: "Rat meat has huge potential to be developed into a popular dish which, if extensively commercialised will tackle almost 50 per cent of the food crisis in the country." He said that his department plans to organise food festivals, set up stalls at various locations to sell rat meat and train hotels in ways of making tasty rat meat dishes. The Social Welfare Department plans to popularise rat farming on the lines of chicken and fish-farming. Some field rats weigh as much as 3 kg and if a poor rat-catcher can nab three or four rats a day and sell the meat , he could lift his family out of poverty, Mr Prakash told the daily. Twenty years ago, we were told that Polish rabbit farming would solve the meat problem. Rabbit farms were set up in West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh and by now, they have run into the ground with the animals dying of starvation and disease and escaping into the forests where they have destroyed a large amount of natural habitat. Then we were told that emu meat is wonderful and emus were smuggled in to Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka from Australia and have proven to be big failures except in the clandestine meat market where they are sold as duck and chicken. Ducks and turkeys are still too expensive for their meat to act as substitutes for chicken. And why should they be sold cheaply when dogs, cats, rats, mongooses and squirrels can be caught for free and killed? Maneka Gandhi is an Indian politician, an ardent animal rights activist, environmentalist and former journalist. She has been a Minister in four governments, and has authored a number of books in the areas of etymology, law and animal welfare. She is an estranged member of the Nehru-Gandhi Family |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #2 "Have Gangrene when they are killed" > which is why I'd argued times before that its notsomuch BIRD FLU thats killing poor people in Indonesia and Asia as the fact that they are eating long-dead infected CARRION = ROAD-KILL, + IMPROPER PREP, etc. BIRD FLU + other fram animal diseases ocur naturally and have been here on Guam [farms + ranchos] since I can remember, AND I KNOW OF NO ONE WHOM HAS EVER GOTTEN SICK OR DIED FROM EATING BIRD-FLU AFFECTED POULTRY OR OTHER. ALL TOGETHER NOW, WID FEELING, "DON'T EAT CARRION, ZOMBIE BIRDS/ANIMALS, OR ANYTHING FROM STEPHEN KING'S PET CEMETARY"! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-08-19 19:51 |
| #1 45 per cent of all animals killed in slaughterhouses and 70 per cent of all chickens have gangrene when they are killed You're eating the wrong kind of chickens sister. But in India, who knows. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-08-19 13:51 |