i realize this may sound like a stupid question, but it came up last night and has been niggling me ever since.
does anybody know?
love
sneeze
Only the -alo part with a tiny bit of the f thrown in.
Actually, since beefalo are part cow, it seems clear that the answer is no. To be specific, apparently a true Beefalo is 5/8 domesticated cattle and 3/8 domesticated bison.
thank you, wurd perfect for your response, but:
can something be less than 100% holy? i would think that holiness is an all or nothing sort of deal.
i want to know if there is a specific thing in the hindu religion concerning beefalo - or, since there probably arent mad swarms of beefalo roaming over the indian subcontinent, is it a non issue? do hindus in beefaloed parts of the world just avoid the issue by not eating?
love
sneeze
The cows held sacred by Hindi people are Brahman cattle. Beefalo are bred from various American beef steer. I don’t know if Hinduism prohibits eating beef from cattle which are not Brahman or not, though.
Well, holiness may be an all or nothing deal. But if it is, wouldn’t that merely mean that the desecration happened prior to the food product, that is - by the breeder of the Beefalo? And so eating same would still contribute to the continued desecration by creating demand?
I wasn’t able to find if there was a specific edict against it, but I would be surprised if there was much of a call for one, as those who are devout probably spend their time in ways more productive than looking for loopholes that will allow them to suck down Big Macs.
I once worked at a Wendy’s that had an Indian for a supervisor. Nice guy, had no problems handling the meat, no idea if he was devout or not, but it was still kind of disturbing to walk into the kitchen and see him flipping burgers.
Now that would be quite a trick! Please do tell me all about this steer-breeding. 
Seriously, is beefalo still a going concern? I know bison ranching is taking off quite quickly, but I had understood that the beefalo project, which was intended to combine the weight-gain ability of beef with the hardiness of bison, actually resulted in an animal with the weight-gain characteristics of bison and the hardiness of beef…
Anyways, I don’t think Hindus actually distinguish between breeds with respect to the prohibition on eating beef. I mean, you don’t seem to see them lined up buying the 100% ground Angus loin. So the fact (if it is a fact) that there is no Brahman in beefalo would be irrelevant.
Well, you get the steer really drunk, you see, and…
However, some Hindus do distinguish between cattle and buffalo.
In Nepal (the world’s only Hindu kingdom), cow slaughter is illegal and no one would openly serve beef from a cow. On the other hand, killing water buffalos is not prohibited and many tourists, including myself, have dined on “buff” in a Kathmandu restaurant (one of the most famous steak houses in the Kingdom being this one). However I will note that often the only folks eating buff are tourists. While many Nepali Hindus are not strictly vegetarian, I believe that many woud find the consumption of water buffalo distasteful, if not downright polluting.
Once you get into the higher elevations of Nepal–where the population is typically more Buddhist and less Hindu–the rules tend to be more relaxed. It’s not uncommon, for example, to see dried meat from yaks or even yak/cow cross-breeds being consumed by the locals in areas above 3000m.
Please note, however, that Hinduism in Nepal is different from what’s practiced in North India and even more different from what’s practiced in South India. I can’t ever remember seeing water buffalo on an Indian menu, for example, and I don’t know if it would be considered acceptable or not (but I doubt it).
Yes, I am aware of this. However, “beefalo” are not related to water buffalo. They are a cross between beef and the North American Bison (commonly called buffalo), an extremely close relative of the domestic cow - it’s much the same as crossing timber wolves and domestic dogs.
Yes, I should have made that clear in my post.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any bison in South Asia (I certainly never saw any–even in zoos), so I restricted my comments to those bovines in Nepal with which I had direct experience–on the theory that the Hindus might treat bison similarly to other bovines that aren’t strictly cattle.
I’ll also note that while bison are, indeed, closely related to domestic cattle, they belong to separate genus (Bison) from either cattle (Bos) or the Asian water buffalo (Bubalus). Yaks, on the other hand, are a member of the Bos genus.
Actually Bison is found all over India.
Yes, but the “Indian bison” is the gaur (Bos gaurus), a quite different species from the American Bison (Bison bison).
I have no idea whether or not the slaughter of gaur is anathema to Hindus.