India’s beef industry: trouble brewing

The slaughter of cows is banned in many states in India and the export of cow meat is prohibited across the country.

But go to any major Indian city and you will find steaks and beef burgers on the menu in high-end restaurants, a new phenomenon that has has led to confusion and protest alike.

Though India is the world’s second largest exporter of beef, a category that includes both cow and buffalo meat, domestic consumption is still very limited. This year, for example, India will consume 2.1m tonnes of beef and veal, according to the US Foreign Agricultural Service, while it produces 3.8m tonnes. Compare that with Brazil, which will produce 9.6m tonnes and consume 7.9m tonnes.

The anecdotal evidence, however, suggests this is changing.

“One just needs to look at the number of restaurants in cities serving beef and steak – they didn’t exist until recently,” says Arpan Sharma, spokesperson of the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations. “Much of that is from buffalo meat but as demand grows and people see there is profit to be made, some of that is obviously being served by illegal cow meat.”

        Among India’s urban middle class, beef is gaining popularity as some people travel abroad and develop a taste for the red meat and others move away from the traditional Hindu values their parents may have held.

        Take Basilico, an upmarket bistro in south Mumbai. There are more than 15 varieties of steak on the menu as well as beef burgers.

        “People prefer it because chicken, say a chicken sandwich, that has always been there and people want to try something new,” says Ajeeb Abdulla, the restaurant’s manager, who stresses that this is buffalo and not cow meat. “People are travelling more and more now, so they want the same thing to be available everywhere.”

        In fact, items labelled as beef in India are often buffalo meat. There is general confusion about the rules on eating, serving and producing cow meat in specific regions.

As the FT reports on Friday, the beef industry has become a highly political issue as religious groups have used the consumption and production of the meat to mark out minority Muslim communities, creating communal tensions.

        Before Partition in 1947, cattle were marched from Sindh in present-day Pakistan through the cattle belt of India and out into Bengal, notes Delwar Hussain, an anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh who has studied smuggling across India’s border with Bangladesh.

“This is a very, very old trade,” he says. “People have been managing to adapt their lives to the state’s attempt to try to control its border – this is Delhi, Dhaka, Islamabad, millions of miles away.”

        The pressures on the industry have been rising with demand, as the Indian public – very gradually – develops a taste for red meat and foreign markets take to buffalo meat.

This creates a large and dangerous black market. Officials at Peta, an animal rights group, estimate there are over 30,000 illegal abattoirs in India where cows are often slaughtered as well as buffalo – and it is widely accepted that this meat gets mixed up with the legal supply.

Chetan Sharma from People for Animals, an activist group, has raided six unlicensed slaughterhouses in the past year and says violence is inevitable. He describes these butchers as gunde, or thugs, and says they often position their operations near Muslim communities, who may not want Hindu values forced upon them, so they can stir up an insurgency if anyone tries to shut their business down.

        Another problem is that unofficial abattoirs often have very basic facilities and their owners have little understanding of public health regulation. As this meat trickles into India’s exports, the formal industry is suffering in terms of reputation as well as profits.

“You’re selling inferior products for export and there are quality issues,” says Fauzan Alavi, director of Allanasons, one of the country’s largest meat companies. “These exports aren’t from x company or y company, they’re all called Indian exports.”

        The government has been taking steps to support the trade and last year New Delhi introduced a new rule whereby exporters must show that they have sourced meat from abattoirs or processing plants registered with government authorities.

The next challenge is tracing meat across this vast nation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has been working with the government to develop a strategy for identification and tracking.

        “What happens is that animals will be transported, people have their own slaughterhouses completely illegally in a backyard and it ends up in an export cycle,” says Shweta Sood, a campaign coordinator at the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations.

As campaigning begins in the run up to this year’s general election, religious issues such as this are coming to the fore. It explains why, whatever support and regulation this vast and valuable industry needs, any government will struggle to push through hard-hitting reforms on this contentious issue.

Jan 02-2014: By Avanthika Chilkoti

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