GST: Does government want us to eat donkey meat and other questions
A full-page advertisement in newspapers this morning has a list of exempted goods under GST.
Casually thrown in among exempted goods like sindoor, bangles, puja samagri, human hair and municipal waste, are meat of horses, asses, bovines, mules, hinnies, and antlers of animals.
The list will make one feel that we consume donkey steak, horse hinds, and have deer antlers hanging up on our walls. The fact though is that donkey or horse meat is not widely consumed, and trading in antlers is banned under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
I have a few questions:
1. Does India want to promote horse, mule and donkey meat?
I am not against meat-eating, but I would like the government to speak out on how they propose this can be done.
Horses in our country are often overworked and no one wants to even talk about giving rights to donkeys. Beaten, starved and abused, I want to know what the fate of the animal will be if it is also eaten on a mass scale.
What conditions will be maintained for humane slaughter, transportation, and care?
2. Do other livestock not have rights against cruelty?
While we cry hoarse on the rights of cows, other working animals such as donkeys, livestock and horses need much more attention. (Let us also be clear that cows are working animals. Castrated bulls are worked in fields, and cows used for milk.)
If India wants to promote eating donkeys, horses and mules — or exporting them — then it needs to put safeguards in place. The worst thing would be to announce this list and let the slaughter start anyhow.
Severely abused animals like horses and donkeys need much more regulation in the manner in which they are housed, transported and “retired”.
The notification exempts fresh, frozen or chilled meat of bovine animals, horses, donkeys, hinnies and mules, with the exception of frozen meat put up in unit containers.
3. Why are we going against our laws through misleading words?
The GST list is exhaustive, and exempts products like raw silk, silk waste and natural honey. Strangely, the list also exempts items that can cause wildlife poaching.
Item classified as 050790 are “all goods i.e. hoof meal, horn meal, hooves, claws, nails and beaks, antlers etc."
Horns and hooves, and the meal of horns and hooves could belong to cows, donkeys, horses, camels, and so on. But antlers belong to deer. Antlers are horn-like formations, often making branches, that adorn a deer’s head. But they are not horns. Domestic animals like cows do not have antlers.
The GST exemption list is duty-bound to be far more careful in its communication. The issue is even more urgent as deer are an illegally poached species. It is because antlers, ivory, skin and bones are often poached that the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, explicitly forbids trading in antlers.
4. Do we want to encourage illegal deer hunting?
After centuries of hunting deer and antelope, India decided to end hunting. No longer can people chase or hunt deer and antelope, neither is it legally permissible to use their antlers or heads.
Hunting has led to the local extermination of many species — blackbuck and chinkara antelopes are now found in much smaller areas in India; simultaneously, the protected status accorded by our laws have led to some revival of populations of deer species like the Chital.
The Wildlife Act elaborates on hunting – “no person shall, unless specially authorised by a license, hunt the young of any wild animal, other than vermin, or any female of such animal, or any deer with antlers in velvet.”
Neither are deer notified as vermin, nor is India involved in any large-scale import of foreign deer species. The word antler as an exempt GST good will pave the way for poachers to exploit this as a loophole.
The government needs to come out and state what its intentions are, and what it plans for these species. It needs to remove words that are and can be misleading, or leading to illegal activities.
The list ends with exempting lottery and lottery supply from the GST. It’s a bit tragic that a whole bunch of animals are part of an ostensible "lottery" list for easier trading, especially if no subsequent safeguards are made for living, breathing organisms sharing space with phool jhadoo (item 9603) and sewage waste (item 3825).