Agence France-Presse has recently reported that the sacred status of cows in India is being pushed to a still higher level by scientists who are tirelessly working in research labs to develop a new line of medicines made of cow feces and urine.

Promoting the sanctity of the cows in a clearly more practical manner, scientists in Ahmedabad, a city in western India, are fervently engaged in developing cow dung- and urine-based drugs which they claim can treat a number of ailments - from bad breath to cancer.

Saying that “God resides in cow dung,” Kesari Gumat, a scientist at the Ahmedabad Research Center, has elaborated that the formulas used for developing the medicines “are not new. They are contained in ancient Hindu holy texts. We are just making them with a scientific approach.”

The exhaustive list of products being prepared from cow feces and urine includes soaps, toothpastes, shampoos, incense sticks, mosquito coils and even surprisingly a soft drink – which has cow urine as a key constituent, and is awaiting government approval!

The ‘raw materials’ for the medicines and products are largely generated ‘on site’ from the over 300 cows which roam the vast premises of the research centre. While the cow’s feces are collected, dried and stirred at a high temperature to kill harmful bacteria; the impurities in cow urine are removed through distillation.