With Maharashtra banning beef, it makes a resurgence in neighbouring Goa

Panaji Carmen Athaide 49 slices a few slivers of beef into a broth thats just beginning to simmer on her old kitchen stove As the soup comes to a boil the warm wholesome aroma cuts through the predominant sharp smell of vinegarbased redchilli masala commonly used in Christian homes in the former Portuguese colonyThats the first beef soup Carmen a housewife from Anjuna village 20 km north of Panaji has cooked for two weeks nowBeef whose sale has been banned in neighbouring BJPruled Maharashtra is slowly making the journey back to the plate in Goa also ruled by the BJP after the politically touchy redmeat went off the grid for a bit leaving the states large meateating population angry and deprivedSince last week beef is being sold through a network of 65 private cold storages And the state governments decision to purchase meat and sell it through the cold storage chain may have just forced the beef traders to once again open their establishments that they had shut following alleged threats from a rightwing Hindu groupWe were always willing to sell beef but procuring it has been a problem We will now try to get live cattle from Karnataka and Maharashtra and slaughter them here but we need some kind of protection from the police because these NGOs are harassing us Munna Bepari the spokesperson of the All Goa Meat Traders Association saidWhile the opposition and Christian groups in the state blamed animal rights groups Hindu religious NGOs and the Bharatiya Janata Partyled government for the beef crisis the saffron party which has also banned the sale of beef in Haryana put through its novel initiative to return the red meat to several thousand dinner tables in Goa We in Goa are used to fresh beef This was frozen beef which I bought from the cold storage It doesnt taste that great but something is better than nothing Athaide saidBeef supply in Goa has been erratic ever since the Akhil Vishwa Jai Shrirama Gosanvardhan Kendra an NGO that backed a ban on cattle slaughter in 2013 petitioned the Bombay High Court bench in Panaji for a ban on cattle slaughter citing atrocities on cattle being brought to the Goa Meat Complex GMC the states only abattoir operated by a government corporationThen chief minister Manohar Parrikar was an advisor to the Kendra a post he relinquished a month before the petition was filed The high court in its subsequent order said that the slaughter in future would be overseen by officials and a representative of the NGO at the abattoirBeef traders in Goa claim that Kendra representatives had been harassing them and refusing to allow slaughter of any cattle at the abattoir as a result of which they were forced to down shuttersAccording to GMC chairman Lyndon Monteiro beef traders several of whom were part of an interstate illegal beef mafia were holding the state to ransom and creating an artificial crisis After negotiations with the beef traders failed the GMC took the initiative of buying beef from neighbouring states and selling it in Goa through private cold storage chains Goa consumes about 30 to 50 tonnes of beef every day We plan to expand the delivery chain in order to meet the requirement Monteiro saidBeef is normally consumed in the form of stews curries roasts and soups and is an essential protein and one of the cheapest meats in most Christian homes in Goa Beef is also commonly consumed in the tourismoriented coastal belt that annually sees nearly three million tourists half a million of them foreigners