Jan 6th, 2016: Indian Crap on ebay

[xoxoxoBruce]

For centuries Indian farmers have been mixing straw with the manure from the sacred cattle(holy shit), to make patties which are dried and used for fuel. These patties are burned for cooking and heat because trees were too valuable and the very poor quality coal was too far from most farms.



They are a common item used every day, but for the Indian expats scattered around the world, the patties were fondly remembered as part of the cooking preparation for religious holidays like Diwali. So some enterprising pattie poopers put them on ebay and sold out quickly. Word spread and more people joined in on ebay and Amazon.

Now some retailers are getting orders so large that they are offering free global delivery, and some customers, from urban areas inside India and abroad, are asking for gift wrapping. Just a quick search for 'cow dung cake' on eBay or Amazon brings up dozens of results to buy packs of patties from India and Pakistan.
One seller based in the Indian city of Agra, home of the iconic Taj Mahal, boasted of how it has an 'astonishing variety of uses'. He claimed they can be used as natural fertiliser, an 'air purifier' when mixed with camphor and even in cooking, adding: 'In burning these cow dung cakes, the temperature never rises beyond a certain point ensuring the nutrients in the food are not destroyed by overheating.'

These hucksters have invaded the territory formerly occupied by snake oil, cancer cures, and "as seen on TV". I wonder about shipping Sun dried cow poop, unidentified plant material, and probably more than a few insects, to other countries, unless they're sterilized? A quick check of Amazon showed one six inch pattie was $6.50 + $4.99 shipping.

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