The Halal vs Jhatka debate has kept all platforms of social media quite busy for the past couple of years and has resurfaced frequently. The trillion-dollar Halal business has taken over the non-veg food market in Bharat and multiple western countries and has now made inroads, stealthily, into the veg food industry also. They are inching towards establishing a monopoly over or trying to force food processing of non-meat products to bear a Halal certification as well.
While the fight against this economic jihad continues, here is a refreshing piece of news. An outlet operating through the website Jhattack.com becomes Bharat’s first outlet supplying Jhatka cut meat to non-vegetarians who prefer not consuming Halal. Jhattack.com is an upcoming outlet that has started running in all metros, tier 1, 2 & 3 cities. The website has tied up with numerous slaughterers country-wide to make Jhakta meat available to homes that love non-veg food but were forced to buy Halal by meat-supplying giants like Licious and Fresh To Home.
The owner of the outlet had to brave life threats coming from Bharat and even the middle-east for providing Jhatka meat to its customers. Given the biased left-leaning attitude of Twitter, it was not difficult for conspirators to get the Twitter handle of this account banned without the violation of any Twitter norm, and solely on the basis of conspirators reporting the profile under ‘hate speech’. From this instance, it becomes clear how powerful and vicious the Halal ecosystem is, and it is going to be an uphill battle for Jhattack.com.
But the owner took up the challenge, and when we reached them, they said,
“I started jhattack.com after I could not find jhatka cut meats to eat. Being a meat lover, especially mutton, I grew up eating jhatka meat and when I moved to Gurgaon and had my own kitchen I could not find jhatka meat. So when I decided to have an aggregator, I started doing a bit of research that 99.99% of meat sold in India is not jhatka. When I spoke with Hindu jhatka butchers, they told me that all restaurants only sell halal so they have become unemployable. One Hindu butcher told me that few of his cousins had converted to Islam just to keep their livelihood going, I was shocked. I learned that many Hindu butchers had given up on their occupation and taken up labor work elsewhere.
On further research, I gathered that all restaurants and food chains buy Halal meat. We Hindus were being forced to eat Halal and fund the Halal economy as alternatives were getting depleted. Hence, I started this outlet. I will tie-up with all Jhatka butchers across Bharat as I intend to supply all Jhatka-preferring kitchens with an option to have so, instead of rendering them optionless and forced to eat Halal. A secular country must not force its citizens to eat from religion-specific outlets, it must have options for all citizens.”
The Jhattack.com owner claims that the response so far has been amazing as many Hindu households that wanted Jhatka meat were not getting it. Though BigBasket, after a prolonged debate, has agreed to supply Jhatka meat, people have expressed their doubts over the outlet as it has been batting for Halal for the longest time and even now is favouring Halal over Jhatka. Many have expressed the suspicion that they may just re-package Halal cuts as Jhatka. Also, the Jhatka meat supplied by BigBasket costs way more than Halal. This seems unfair as Jhatka, unlike Halal, doesn’t need any certification that incurs extra cost. Then why must BigBasket charge more for Jhatka? Are they trying to discourage people from buying Jhatka?
In such times of distrust among buyers, Jhattack.com gives assurance to consumers. But as the outlet is fairly new, we request our readers to spread the word about this outlet. If they know any Jhatka butchers, they may want to connect them with Jhattack.com by sending an email to [email protected] so that those butchers could take advantage of the platform to reach more customers.
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