An Indian food delivery company was in the news recently. For all the wrongful reasons.
They planned to introduce a ‘pure vegetarian fleet’ to supply food to vegetarian customers in India.
The company CEO Deepinder Goyal announced that the ‘Pure Veg Fleet’ will wear green uniform instead of the usual red while delivering.
People in general were outraged when he said they would not deliver food from any restaurants that serve eggs, fish, chicken or any sort of meat.
The social media soon joined in the fray. They were up in arms, calling the new fleet discriminatory.
The issue died only when the CEO of the company apologized and retracted the statement.
Mr. Goyal said on X (formerly Twitter) that his company rider’s physical safety was of paramount importance. He further said the new (mis) adventure might put his customers into trouble with their homeowners.
Sheikh Salauddin, president of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers union, criticized Goyal’s announcement by saying that he was going to categorize delivery partners on the lines of caste, community and religion.
Well, that asks a bigger question: Is India actually a majority vegetarian nation?
They have a very strange order among them. They eat no flesh, but live with roots and rice and milk. – wrote Ralph Fitch, an English traveller to India in the year 1580.
The ancient Vedas, Dharmashastras, Manusmiriti, Puranas and Thirukural (the famous Tamil couplet) have mentioned more about the benefits of being vegetarian than meat-eating.
But India, as the world knows, has historically, been a meat-eating nation with widespread forests, animals, fish and birds. Archaeological finds from the Harappan civilisation show people consumed meat.
Later, as Jainism and Buddhism spread, vegetarianism became more common. And Hindus have embraced vegetarianism.
Now, a third of India eat vegetarian food. But, strangely, vegetarians among the Hindus mostly belong to the upper-caste.
The controversies don’t end so soon.
The same food delivery company kicked up a row in West Bengal as Muslim delivery agents of the company struck work by refusing to deliver pork items to customers. The Hindu delivery agents soon followed suit. They opposed delivery of beef to customers.
As this is dragging on forever, people in South East Asia and China have shown a liking for a new recipe.
Technology Networks have recently published a news item people might find scary. Caution!
(Trigger Warning: Readers are advised caution as the content might sound offensive to some).
Farmed pythons may offer a sustainable and efficient new form of livestock to boost food security, according to new research from Macquarie University.
Snake meat is white and very high in protein, says Dr Daniel Natusch, who led the study done by two South-East Asian commercial python farms.
Dr. Natusch is an Honorary Research Fellow from the School of Natural Sciences attached to Macquarie University.
The multi-institutional research team included scientists from Macquarie University, the UK’s University of Oxford, the University of Adelaide, Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand and the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi.
They found pythons convert feed into weight gain (remarkably) more efficiently compared to conventional livestock such as chickens and cattle.
“Our study suggests python farming complementing existing livestock systems may offer a flexible and efficient response to global food insecurity”, the university concludes.
Though it will take a long time for the Western world (and the palates in India) to culturally adapt to the thought of eating snakes, it’s important to consider an alternative protein source to mitigate global food insecurity.
Have snakes come as saviours to serve the cause? – is the most pertinent question now.
"சென்றிடுவீர் எட்டுத் திக்கும்" 