A cultural materialist explanation for the taboo on killing cows and eating beef involves the fact that cattle in India play a more important role alive than dead or carved into steaks (Harris 1974). The many cattle wandering the streets of Indian cities and villages look useless to Westerners. But a closer analysis shows that the seemingly useless population of bovines serves many use- ful functions. Ambling along, they eat paper trash and other edible refuse. Their excrement is "brown gold useful as fertilizer or when mixed with straw and formed into dried patties, as cooking fuel. Most important, farmers use cattle to plow fields. Cultural materialists take into account Hindu beliefs about the sacred meaning of cattle, but they see its relationship to the material value of cattle as symbolic protection keeping these extremely useful animals out of the meat factory. Some cultural anthropologists are strong interpretivists, whereas some are strong cultural materialists. Many combine the best of both views.