India’s growing meat industry

http://www.bikyamasr.com/76231/indias-growing-meat-industry/

 

MUMBAI: Downtown Mumbai, the old Colonial area, is a modern and clean city. Upscale restaurants, shops and the crowded streets are a symbol of the future of India’s push toward infrastructure development. At almost every turn is a restaurant.

Ironically, for a country based largely on its religious majority Hindu faith – a religion that for the most part is vegetarian – meat is on the menu. And in large amounts. TimeOut Mumbai lists numerous “hot spots” and the latest trendy hang-out location. Many, if not all, single out the restaurant or bar’s top dish, consisting largely of meat. India has gone meaty, animal rights activists told Bikyamasr.com earlier this year.

“We have seen it rise up as the country tries to entice those wealthy companies and businesses to come to the country,” said Sanjay, a Mumbai-based computer programmer who has been an avid supporter of animal rights. He argued that the rise in “Western-style development has also meant the beginning of their horrible factory farm industry.”

Some two and a half hours away from Mumbai is Nasik, a fast-growing city that has seen massive development projects in recent years. On the outskirts of the city is one of the many dairy farms. Large concrete walls hold hundreds of cows, in small cubicles. They defecate on the ground. The same ground they attempt to sleep on. For many activists, the new India is not so much the India they are hopeful for.

“I just wish we would have been able to keep a lot of what was Indian,” added Sanjay. But not all of India is Hindu, and even those who are, still enjoy a good meat dish.

The Sukrut Nirman Charitable Trust has said that meat production, what animal activists call killing, has seen a near two-fold increase in the past decade.

According to their statistics, published in Times of India, the country “poduces an estimated 6.27 million tons, which is 2.21 percent of the world’s meat production

“Buffalo meat is about 23.33 percent, cattle 17.34 percent, sheep 4.61 percent, goat 9.36 percent, pig 5.31 percent, poultry 36.68 percent and other species 3.37 percent.”

For those who are calling for an India that cherishes its non-violent history and its vegetarianism, the numbers are a staggering reality of the costs animals are now paying in the country.