May 10, 2001
		Hindus Raid McDonald’s After French Fry Disclosure On May 4, enraged Hindu activists in a Bombay suburb charged into a McDonald’s restaurant, destroying furniture and lights to protest the use of beef flavoring in the chain’s U.S. French fries. There were no reports of injuries, police said. In southern Bombay, demonstrators from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party surrounded another McDonald’s, shouting slogans and smearing the restaurant with cow manure. McDonald’s spokespeople have said that French fried in India are made without beef flavoring, unlike in the United States. The protests were incited by front-page newspaper reports of the beef ingredient used in the chain’s French fries. About 85% of India’s Hindus are vegetarian, and the cow is considered sacred by them. McDonald’s released a statement last Wednesday, saying it had never claimed that the French fries it sells in the U.S. are vegetarian, although many got that impression when they switched from lard to vegetable oil in 1990. The statement said that the fries conain a “miniscule trace of beef flavoring, not tallow.” McDonald’s openedit’s first store in India in 1996, and now there are 28 outlets there.