I have some degree of sympathy for the Hindus in this and rather less so for the vegans and veggies.
I'm also a bit perplexed that whatever polymer they are using requires any tallow at all. On further inspection it appears that stearates are used to make manufacturing easier - they provide lubrication (to prevent sticking to metal parts) during manufacture and also scavenge out/inactivate residual catalyst particles.
You can make stearate completely synthetically but it's vastly cheaper to make it from rendered fat. I don't really see why they couldn't use veg fat derived stearate.
Also, I think it got mentioned on The Last Leg, the amount of fat used in the entire production run amounts to half a cows worth. The amount per note is completely minuscule. You probably get more tallow on you walking past a burger van than you will handling a new fiver.
