MCDONALD’S TO OPEN FIRST VEGETARIAN OUTLETS

MCDONALD'S TO OPEN ITS FIRST
VEGETARIAN-ONLY RESTAURANT

www.foxnews.com/world - McDonald's Corp., the fast food chain that brought the hamburger to the world, is opening what may be its first vegetarian-only restaurants. The world's biggest hamburger chain said last week that the locations in India will serve only vegetarian food because of customer preferences in the region. The company could not immediately say when the restaurants would open or how many there would be. A 2006 poll found that about 40 percent of Indians do not eat meat, and McDonald's is eager to tap that 500-million-strong market. 
Already, McDonald's said its restaurants in India do not sell beef or pork, and that the kitchens are separated into sections for cooking vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. They have menu items that cater to local tastes, such as the Maharaja Mac, which is a Big Mac made with chicken patties instead of beef. It also offers a McAloo Tikki, a burger made with a spicy breaded potato patty, red onions, tomatoes and a “special vegetable sauce.” The chain offers such localized options in countries around the world.

The opening of the vegetarian-only restaurants “further speaks to McDonald's efforts to cater to local tastes,” the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company said. Without providing details, it said the restaurants will be in areas that are popular pilgrimage destinations. McDonald's said the new restaurants are the only ones it's aware of that will serve only vegetarian food. However, local franchises in India and other regions may already have meatless menus. For religious reasons, beef is not eaten by Hindus, who make up the majority of India's population of about 1.2 billion people. 
McDonald's has more than 33,500 locations around the world, but only about 250 are in India. As McDonald's faces rising competition and a volatile world economy, it has said it will focus on offering more food options that cater to local tastes in order to grow sales. Last month, the company said a key revenue measure came in flat for July, which was its worst showing in more than nine years. The figure had grown every month since April 2003.  Since opening in1996, McDonald’s restaurants in India have never served beef, in deference to local sensibilities, as even non-vegetarians shun the meat, and primarily serves chicken burgers.

McDonald's (MCD) - the fast food chain - is setting up vegetarian outlets in Amritsar, home to the Golden Temple, the holiest site of India’s minority Sikh faith, and in the small town of Katra, the base for Hindus visiting the mountain shrine of Vaishno Devi, the second busiest pilgrimage spot in India. “A vegetarian store makes absolute sense in the places which are famous as pilgrimage sites,” McDonald's India spokesperson  Rajesh Kumar Maini said. As cows are sacred in India, and much of the country is vegetarian, the existing McDonald's locations in India don't serve beef, but they do serve lots of chicken in its place. However, from a proper point of view, a  truly vegetarian food must not include any kind of meat coming from killed animals.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

Anyone who eats meat can’t help but be cruel. At one time or another or at all times they must be cruel, because meat is produced by cruelty and whatever you associate with, that quality you take on, consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly. So chicken or goat or a cow or pig or bird or whatever, these animals are killed. They are conscious beings. They are living entities, like we are but in different form. So, when they are killed, they are very frightened, they are very afraid and they are full of fear and anxiety and all that fear and all that anxiety is in their mind and that goes into their blood and that goes into their meat and you kill that animal and eat that animal to live on. Because to eat animals you have to be so cruel - so much cruelty and violence is in the activity - that all that cruelty and violence comes into you. So, in your basic dealings, your basic thinking there is always a touch of cruelty or hardness or selfishness or meanness or violence in your speaking, in your thinking, in your acting. You can’t help it. The more you eat meat, the more your will be like this.

Śrīla Mahanidhi Swami Mahārāja :
“Non-vegetarianism and Cruelty”
Lecture 6 on Caitanya Caritamrta, Kartika 2006
http://www.mnsbooks.com/
http://www.mnsbooks.com/content/non-vegetarianism-and-cruelty

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
http://www.vedicviews-worldnews.blogspot.com.ar/