[frank ballenger]

Old controversy was over making cheese with “rennet.”
Pig rennet turned off Muslims and Jews, and natural foods types.
Update:
“The use of pig rennet became obsolete in industrial cheese production because it is not very stable and operates at a pH range that is narrower than that of calf rennet; a standardization to obtain constant enzyme activity in pig rennet is more difficult than in calf rennet.”

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I was told a little beef fat is put into McDonald’s fries to enhance the flavor people in test groups likes.

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I saw once that the main reason Hindus in India shun cattle for food is the scrappy, weedlike grass in most of India is not able to support cattle grazing, unlike Europe and the US. So along the way the skinny cattle became revered as holy.

[Uncle Miltie]

Back when I kept Kosher, there was a short discussion about whether to consider rennet in cheese to be traif (a non-kosher meat source with a milk product, a two-fer no-no.)

We quickly decided good cheese was worth bending the rules hard.

[Cronos]

Some Hindus in India - specifically in Kerala - eat beef.

Hinduism is not a very defined religion like Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism. Rather it includes everything from polytheism to atheism with multiple types of religions in it. I call it a “meta-religion”.

Anyway, the reason why the cow is revered dates to the Indo-European reverence for cows - you see this also in the Nordic religion. The Indo-Europeans arose around 4000 BC in the region between the black sea and the caspian sea. They probably started off as cowherders as the common language includes a lot of “cattle” related words. They also developed lactose tolerance.

The development of lactose tolerance meant that they could get a source of nutrition without having to go hunting, hence the reverence for the cow.