Government informed Parliament that there is no difference between the milk of indigenous and foreign cow breeds.

Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Sanjeev Balyan stated in a written reply in Lok Sabha that “as per the information received from ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research), there is no conclusive information available regarding the difference between the quality of milk of foreign breeds of cows and indigenous cattle”.

The minister was responding to a question by YSR Congress MP Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy and BJP MP Virendra Kumar on indigenous cattle breeds.

The minister’s answer contradicts a long standing myth in India, which is often peddled as science by many, including some BJP leaders who have made absurd claims like “the milk of Indian cow is yellowish as it has gold in it”.

In 2019, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh had claimed that “The characteristics of Indian cows is that its milk has gold which is why its colour is yellow to some extent. The Indian cows have hump. But the foreign cows do not have it,” he had said.

“Their back is horizontal like that of buffalos. The hump has a vessel which is called Swarna Nari (gold nerve). When it gets sunlight, gold is produced making the colour of milk yellow. It looks golden. The milk with such characteristic carry antidotes. A human being can survive drinking it. Nothing else will be required. It is a total diet,” Ghosh went on to claim.

Even the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Ayog, a government body set up to protect cows had tried to pass such absurd claims as science.

The RKA which had courted controversy for its now postponed Cow science exam made the same claims stating that the colour of Indian cow milk “is light yellow as it has traces of gold in it.

After being widely criticized for passing off myth as science the RKA had last month postponed the online exam indefinitely.

Source : Indiatimes Mar,11,2021 by Bobins Abraham