In my first year in college, I used to Karim’s there once every week and have been going there off and on for the last six years.. Recently, I went there after six months and found that the dishes we ordered (Badam Pasanda, Chicken Stew) were nowhere near as good as they used to be.

I loved what you wrote.

PLoS Pathog 3(7): e93. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.0030093

this study suggest that soil may contribute to environmental spread
of TSEs by increasing the transmissibility of small amounts of
infectious agent in the environment.

Many here are interested in consuming the brains &.or sweetbreads popular in Muslim & Parsi cookery. Even workers in American pork slaughter houses working with animals certiiednot to be infected with any Trasmissible Spongoform Encephalopathies, but in physical contact with brains merely through hosing have become severely at risk for a number of conditions. These incidences ofmorbidity were tracked back to earlier times, when the children of French butchers in Marseilles exhibited abnormally high rates of childhood leukemia. I am a cell biologist, and we are gradually learning many more things as we continue to live longer and screen out the more obvious killers that would have masked these other lethal agents lurking in the background.

For those who might choose to listen, I would urge you to eat meat as far away from the brain, throat & spinal cord as possible; i.e. draw a line passing across the lower mid-shoulder, and eat everything below. Better yet, stick to the 4 arms/shanks. Enough meat there, when there is already an alarm being raised about too much red meat and the genetics of the Indian male.

As we in India begin to grow sald greens & coriander leaf/mints in periurban areas using sewage waters, the probabilities of lethal forms of common parasites & pathogens begin to mount. Short of using detergent- laced water to wash all fruit and vegetables, followed by a soak in 1:9 5% sodium hypochlorite solution [Clorox] or N-halamine, or other complicated short-burst microwave or electron-beam treatments, some of these things can become very very serious, entering the brain, or causing toxic shock. Once is enough! Various types of hepatitis, ccute or chronic leave the liver predisposed to later and more dangerous damage.

Since all the friends here are fond of enjoying food outside, there are some sensible precautions to take:e.g. not eat salads in the Afghan restaurant or even in 5 star restaurants Be wary of dhaniya leaf garnishes unless they are in boilng hot gravies: this is a major contaminating source, as it is grown right
outside Delhi for freshness & high value [most unfortunately using the outfall water from sewage treatment/mistreatment]. This precaution holds true in your own home as well.

Please eat food that needs to be handled as least as possible by vendors. Please be aare that most Indians uffer from chronic low-intensity intestinal disorders that can be clinically demonstrated. There is a factor in microbial population ecology called quorum sensing that continuously modulates the virulence factors of different groups of organisms from day to day so that the same vendor will have different degrees of infectivity on different occasions and your resistances too will be variable. We see people with beringed fingers dispensing panipuri fluid or otherwise in cross-contaminating situations. Given the modes of personal hygiene employed by most Indians, rings become a reservoir of dangerous fecal bacteria.

I was shocked by the casua disregard of elementary consideration, to say nothing of hygiene, exhibited by the hosts of Highway On My Plate: in various confectionaries, bakeries etc. they hung over the counters where food was displayed at eye level, talking over such displays, not realizing the effluvi depositing on the food, then taking out trays of food, playing, handling, joking, to be restored back for general sales. What is wrong with our culture and our own minds when people who claim to be so hip & cool are unaware of the very wrong example they are setting? We are drama queens about swine flu, yet we are completely unconcerned about the minimal standards of food hygiene.

First goat: there are several breed differences, how they are raised, gender, age of slaughter, post-slaughter coolng and onset of rigor [here is where the Jama Masjid abbatoir vs. the Faridabad one, batch slaughter vs. line, coolng by air, no cooling, chilling, every post-slughter handling step has an effect on the "chewiness" of the carcass]. Also, do not forget that the expert Muslim butcher is a vanishing breed, and meat cutting lends much to meat quality.

The Barbari, one of the three major goat breeds of the areas immediately is genetically quite distant from the Beetal & Jamnapari, the latter two “Nubian” type milch breeds with COARSE muscle fibers.

The Barbari would be a lightly better choice, with castrates aged above 10 months but not more than 2, corresponding very roughly to the hoggett stage in sheep, but a bit older. Traditionally, there was the fattening process known as GRAM FED MUTTON where after weaning and a period of browsing, animals were finished off in stalls with a rich diet of chickpeas. Goats physiologically are unable to deposit much subcutaneous fat, in contrast to lambs; their major fat depots are abdominal. However, with the Boer goat genetics [that also include Jamnapari in their ancestry] appreciable amounts of subcutaneous fat are deposited and very high weights are achieved below 1 year of age.

Therefore, a Barbari x Boer cross, or Boer x Black Bengal, has the potential of creating a higher quality meat animal where careful feeding, humane slaughter [which current hall method are absolutely not, brutally wrestling down an animal, twisting its head by force with its horns on the floor, nominall reciting some perunctory prayers, shoving water down a terrified gullet and cutting a throat with no knowledge of physiology or anatomy]. When people here speak of being hungry for buffalo, they should also insist on civilized norms of slaughter, not trollish hitting the animal on the head with a crude mallet, waiting for it to collapse etc.

What is obvious is that today, demand being very high, any and all goat are being used for restaurants, not the carefuly raised & prepared prime animals. In the USA there is meat grading, Prime, Choice, Canner/cutter etc. reflecting to a SLIGHT degree the meat quality, age must also be stated. This sort of grading would compel restaurants to declare whether they were using prime or lower quality and lead to better animal husbandry [hopefully! Although being Indians, we can cheat, corrupt & destroy any good system devised on God's green earth].

With regard to sheep, we have in the Deccan more than 1 breed with good meat conformation. We have good browse and other forage that promote high meat quality, as opposed to blandness. We are the single nation on earth where rich, heavenly sheep milk goes a-begging for pennies, because until some Westerner tells us that it is fashionable to consume, we have not the sense to realize the value of our own produce. Our Ongole/Nellore cattle win top honors at the Clay Meat Research Center at the University of Nebraska for taste & tenderness, as do Red Sindhi hybrids in Australia. As someone who blanches in horror at beef eating, this is not what I personally like but still we have extraordinary beef breeds in India, that also are extraordiary milk breeds. Our cattle form the backbone
of the tropical South American beef industry. WE just do not want to take care of our animals. Our goats sheep, buffaloes, even (yikes) cattle & veal could be stupendous value-added products, and yet we are borrowing South African goat genetics [created from our
own germplasm to] “improve” our meat goats!! How
absurd!! And daily putting up with worthless, unhygienic meat!! Saudi Arabia does not, with spotless modern plants, rigorous inspections, top quality meat animals, expert meat handling, but we must!!
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