Stray cattle in Goa's tourism savvy coastal belt, which includes popular beach villages like Calangute and Candolim, have "turned non-vegetarian" and only eat scraps of chicken and fried fish, claims the state's Garbage Management Minister Michael Lobo.
Lobo, who is a BJP MLA from Calangute Assembly constituency, also said that 76 stray cattle from Calangute village, impounded and relocated to a gaushala, were refusing to eat vegetarian food and that specialist veterinarians had been roped in to wean them of their meat fetish.
"We have lifted 76 cattle from Calangute and taken them to the gaushala run by the Gomantak Gosevak Mahasang in Mayem village, where they are being well looked after. We always say cattle are vegetarian. But cattle from Calangute have turned non-vegetarian and do not eat grass, gram or the special cattle feed given to them," Lobo said, on the sidelines of a village function in Arpora village in North Goa on Saturday.
"The cattle from Calangute and Candolim are used to eating non-vegetarian food like leftover chicken scraps, stale fried fish from restaurants. Due to consumption of such non-vegetarian food, their system has become like that of humans. Earlier they were vegetarian, pure vegetarian. They would smell non-vegetarian food and move on, but now cattle from Calangute only eat non-vegetarian food," he said.