A new soft drink made with bovine urine is under development in India, and if that country’s leading Hindu cultural group has its way, the beverage will be marketed as a “healthy” alternative to Coke and Pepsi.
The soft drink, called “Gau Jal” – that’s Sanskrit for “cow water” – is undergoing lab tests and could be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year,” Om Prakash, the head of India’s cultural group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), told the London Times.
“Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and it will be tasty, too,” he said in an interview from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of the four holy cities on the River Ganges.
Hindus revere cows for their dairy products, and many also consume bovine feces and urine in drinks and spice mixes for their “health giving” properties. Porridge, toothpaste and tonic drinks are some of the products that Indian health food companies add cow feces and urine to.
This is believed to be the first cow urine-based soft drink to come out of India. The RSS’s Cow Protection Department invented the new drink hoping to promote its health-enhancing properties to a wider market. The team is now focused on packaging and marketing the drink and making sure it’s preserved correctly so it doesn’t have an off odor.
So will non-Hindus be “udderly” smitten with the drink? “If it was up against a general soft drink that anyone could go buy in 7-11, I would assume it would not do very well,” says Scott Testa, professor of marketing at St. Joseph’s University.
“It’s pretty hard to enter the drink market in the United States with a mainstream product. And I imagine you’d have a hard time convincing the FDA to allow this into the country.”
He said it might do well in a “niche market,” though – especially if sold in stores popular with Hindus and health food shoppers.
Meanwhile, Chris Roslan, president of Dera, Roslan & Campion, a public relations firm, jokes that he’s got the perfect name for the product: Fizzy Whizzy. Sure does sound like the next pause that refreshes.
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