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Maneka Gandhi column

Quality of egg is an issue

The best eggs really come from hens that spend their days outdoors in a natural environment and scratch for insects, seeds and earthworms in the soil.

A gruesome fact on ‘pate foie gras’

Pate foie gras is French for fat liver paste of a duck or goose fattened by force in a process known as gavage. It is a luxury item because few countries allow it to be made, due to the extreme cruelty involved.

A community like ours

Ants normally keep a very clean nest, and usually throw out dangerous rubbish, like food remains and dead bodies. This piled-up dry waste is kept for defence, as building materials, and as manure for their crops.

Before it’s too late

One day we will find that the millions of insects we have killed, through pest control, could have saved our lives

Gelatine: The horror product

Food & beverage is the biggest market for gelatine, followed by nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, photography, and cosmetics such as face creams, shampoos, hair sprays, soaps and nail polishes.

Game of ants

During a tournament whichever ant locks its jaws around the head of another ant wins. The winner gets a boost of a hormone, called dopamine, and this helps it in its next tournament. Dopamine starts activating their reproductive system, while the losers' reproductive capabilities shut down

Cow dung: A viable alternative to firewood

We need to change our attitude towards the cow. Milk is not the most important part of the cow, it is her dung. This dung should be used in the cremation grounds. For Hindus, the cow is sacred and so using cow dung, instead of wood, should not pose a problem

Our mythological birds

The Homa bird, of Vedic times, lives and breeds in the air, lays eggs in the air, and, before the eggs reach the earth, they hatch and the baby bird flies upward to join its mother. Persian, Turkish and Sufi poets praise them as divine birds, and birds of paradise