Current milk production
Ahimsamilk.org — Inevitable Slaughter
In the current dairy industry non-“useful” animals – sick or aging dairy cows and most new-born male calves – are slaughtered. Cows are usually killed whilst still young, often at only a quarter of their natural lifespan, because they’re no longer as productive as they used to be. Calves are taken from their mothers soon after birth and fed artificial milk. Due to the ill-health of their mothers, calves are usually too scrawny to be profitable and are therefore killed. But the fate of calves that do live is no better; they will become veal calves, dairy cows or beef bulls.
Seeing as all animals involved in the dairy business are slaughtered at some point, it is questionable whether dairy can be considered as strictly vegetarian.
Cows “milked to death”
Dairy cows are artificially inseminated and forced to churn out calves every year, meaning they are practically always pregnant. They are also pumped with hormones to produce an artificially high yield of milk. This often leads to a disease called mastitis in which the udders swell up and become extremely tender, as well as causing the cows to struggle under their own body weight. This makes the machine milking process even more painful and uncomfortable.
Zero Grazing
Supermarket pressure on farmers is forcing small scale farms out of business in favour of mass industrialised farms with herds as large as 8,000. In order to keep costs to a minimum, cows are kept indoors at all times in pens with barely enough room to move, isolated from one another. Living indoors, often on concrete floors, causes lameness, disease and distress. The animals have no access to grass and are artificial fed high-protein concentrates.
Hare Krsna.
I have been a devotee for over 35 years now and my profession is farming since a small boy. I have much experience in Farming and at one point owned a 100 acre Farm as a devotee.
After reading your article i felt compelled to write in to say that this article is riddled with inaccurate misconceptions and mis information.
I totally support Cow protection but we do need to understand what milk production really is today in 2011 in western countries.
In the 1960’s-1980’s Milk production was totally subsidised by Govnt.s and the Common Agricultural Policy of Europe. So basically farmers could do whatever they liked and would get cheques for doing nothin.
The term “ahimsa” milk is totally misleading. The idea is based on the fact in Iskcon that just because the Cows are not killed then the ensuing milk produced by the protected cows is “ahimsa”. For me this is just speculative knowledge rather than a conclusion based on Scripture and Srila Prabhupada’s teachings.
In Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 3 Chapter 29 Text 15 the term used when connected to agriculture is “minimum-violence” not “non-violence”. Srila Prabhupada writes that even eating a vegetable is violence and conditional life means we have to commit violence of some description whether we like it or not. It is a natural law. A law of the material world, period.
In Cow protected milk production we cant assume that just because a Cow that produces milk is not killed herself that there is no violence committed in that chain of events leading to that milk production. Even picking a Carrot and feeding that Cow means violence has entered into the chain of events. Sawing down a tree to make a Goshala means violence has been committed to that tree to house that cow, violence has again be committed. And all through the whole production of Cow protection there is a series of actions by the humans and the cows of violence, it is unavoidable.
The most a devotee can hope to achieve is “natihimsrena”-minimum violence.
If we consider the actions of Arjuna on the Battlefield of killing because he was ordered by Krsna then we can see that minimum violence or violence as ordered by the Lord is called “natihimsa”.
When Krsna kept Cows He had nearly a million Cows.The size of a herd is not a problem but how they are cared for.
Mastistis is not directly related to how much hormones a Cow is given. Mastistis is caused by a lack of animal husbandry, and where on earth are cows pumped full of hormones on a daily basis, do you know how much money that would cost? A farmer would go out of business if he pumped all his cows full of hormones and how would he find the time to do this twice on a daily basis to all of his cows. This is just scaremongering. Its a journalistic joke!
8000 cows in a herd is not as large as Krsna’s herd. Why do numbers of cows in a herd create a problem in reporting terms. Zero grazing is wrong and living on concrete is wrong. Where are these herds living? Putting Cows out onto grass makes sense, saves feeding them and is easy for labour and is good animal husbandry, most farmers do this practice, but slaughtering Cows is definately wrong.
your servant Dusyanta dasa.
My dear Dusyanta Dasa,
I really would love to say a few things here. Forget about the scriptures for a second, have you ever tried to listen to your own heart. What does your heart say when your ears hear about the atrocities committed on these helpless animals. The holy ancient scriptures came into existence only when the saints and sages of the yore opened themselves to their hearts. If one follows the scriptures dicta-tum then humans are nothing more than robots.
There is a great ancient saying and that is “Only the bravest can walk the spiritual path”. Ahimsa includes all actions and thoughts that can induce pain to fellow earthling. If you travel back in history milk was NEVER used in the way it is being used today. Today when we say milk is sacred it remains just in words merely. But in the past many people used to have cows at their homes , take care of them and use the milk so obtained for minimal daily uses. Not like the todays generation where in in a single day they want everything from coffee, tea, milk, paneer, ghee, cheese …all in a single day. This is called himsa , for the only reason that inorder to fulfill this desire of human, cows undergo pain that just cannot be discussed cos it hurts even to discuss or write about it.
I personally remember that even my grandparents used to have tea or coffee very occasionally in a month. Milk based sweets were prepared only on festivals as offering to God. So there were would always be a joy in the entire family in awaiting for that occasion. Unlike today where milk based food products ranging from sweets to curries have become a daily necissity. This is himsa. This is also equivalent to killing those helpless creatures. In order to accomodate these cravings the cows and calves live a life of hell with death facing them every second.
If we all cannot understand this pain which is so visible and in front of our eyes then how can any one even comprehend the pain of trees and fruit and vegetable bearing plants. There is no point in arguing about a higher aspect (life in plants) if the lower most visible aspects (life in animals) is not understood and attended to.
In India there are sections of people who do not eat any underground vegetables as a mark of ahimsa. People serious about ahimsa to plants can follow that. If all the efforts towarda ahimsa towards animals can be accomplished first then only the next state of ahimsa towards plants can be achieved.
I would like to share a small secret of our ancient Indian past where many ascetics have been successful in depending only on 5 elements of nature to sustain their life. ie complete ahimsa.
Do you think that a normal human being can even think of doing something as inconceivable as that? As far as normal human beings are concerned total ahimsa is not possible if one thinks on a logical or a superficial basis like comparing eating animals to plants. Our world consists of both micro and macro organisms. We humans are killing micro organisms to even smaller creatures such as worms in intestines and also ants and what not in our state of non awareness. The state of ahimsa which is very pure can only be achieved only when a human reaches a state of complete awareness or so called self realization. Until then humans have to sustain their life by as much ahimsa as possible by depending on plant based food.
Again I would like to emphasise that thoughts should only help humans towards self realization. This is possible by following the principle of ahimsa to the “MAXIMUM” extent and not be pulled or weighed down by the things that are not humanly not possible to do.
To conclude I would like to rephrase your words “that just because the Cows are not killed then the ensuing milk produced by the protected cows is “ahimsa”. is not a speculative knowledge but a practical ahimsa concept. Is it not worth the fact that these cows are not killed in most treacherous way to be highly celebrated by a true ahimsa vadin.
Hoping that I have not offended a Krishna devotee by putting forward my views.
Hare Krsna Kevin.
Thanx for your piece and for awhile i stopped thinking about Srila Prabhupada’s scriptures that He wrote especially for the fallen souls of Kali Yuga,but i only stopped for a second as you asked.
I listened to my heart and remembered all those animals that have been killed for human consumption in todays abbatoirs.
Then my mind focussed on the Ksatriyas of yore that would go hunting and on Arjuna at the Battla of Kuruksetra engaged in the “art” of killing as ordered by Krsna , the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
On this subject Srila Prabhupada wrote in S.Bhagavatam
“Arjuna engaged in the art of killing, and although killing is of course , violence, he killed the enemy simply on Krsna’s order.” 3.29.15.
The ksatriyas can serve the Supreme Lord using military arts ,just like Arjuna served Krsna, Arjuna was a warrior; he had no time to study Vedanta or other highly intellectual books. So he followed his heart.
Srila Prabhupada an ardent Vedantist and follower of Vedic knowledge wrote in His S. Bhagavatam as follows;
” Question;You ask us not to eat meat, but you are eating vegetables. Do you think that is not violence?”
Srila Prabhupada; The answer is that eating vegetables is violence, and vegetarians are also committing violence against other living entities because vegetables also have life. Non devotees are killing cows, goats and so many other animals for eating purposes, and a devotee, who is a vegetarian,is also killing.But here significanlty,it is stated that every living entity has to live by killing another entity: that is the law of nature.”
So to follow Ahimsa is not a practical answer to conditional life but our instruction is not to follow Ahimsa but natihimsrena,or minimum-violence. Vaisnavas are not Jains in this respect but our Yoga is Bhakti Yoga or devotional service and in the text that this purport is from spoken by Lord Kapila to His mother Devahuti says that adevotee must execute his prescribed duties, whci are glorious, without material profit. Without excessive violence, one should regularly perform one’s devotional activities.
Even though devotees would not want to cause violence or killing to any living entity that is not a practical answer because commiting violence is a natural law.The idea or concept of Ahimsa milk production is a description of a commodity that does not exist because there is so much violence attached to the human activity of cow protection.The agricultural activities, the animal husbandry activities, the cow shed building activites, the packaging, marketing and hygene activities, the processing of milk activities to other products, and so manu activites of the humans culminate in a host of violence to other living entities to facilitate milk production. We cant avoid violence.
Just be cause Vaisnavas dont slaughter the cow does not mean the milk production is without violence ,if we equate milk production to Ahimsa then we are just deluded, we cant endeavour seperately for Ahimsa because we will deviate from the Vaisnava principle of worshipping Lord Visnu, and as Lord Kapiladeva instructs from the pages of the Transcendental literature Srimad Bhagavatam as directed by Iskcon’s Spiritual Master Srila Prabhupada, “a devotee must execute his prescribed duties….without excessive violence…”.
We are trying to be non-violent but we cant avoid violence so on the practical platform of executing prescribed duties we follow the Lord’s instructions depending on our duties.
Capitalistic values of animal slaughter pervade western and most of the worlds food production.Animal products are used as fertiliser to grow most vegetables,and then the herbicides,pesticides and stabilisers and preservatives are derived from a host of animal products from the slaughter industry, even being a vegan does not exempt you from violence today.The production of soya has forced many forrests to disappear from South America and soya growers used blood,bones and hooves as fertiliser to grow it so wherever we look we find violence in some form in todays food production.
Vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters are all implicated in violence and killing in some form. Our only hope to escape the reaction to violence is to offer our foodstuffs to Krsna as directed by Srila Prabhupada,only in this way can we be happy.
Hare Krsna, Please accept my humble obeisances. All Glories to Srila Prabhupada.
The topic of milk production since I discovered the gruesomeness of it has really upset me. I understand that in the time of Krsna and in the general agrarian lifestyle cows were cared for and protected, the calves were adored, etc. Since the demand for milk has increased the industrialized powers resolved to mass produce, disregarding the soul within and converting the gentler act of hand milking to a heinous mechanical torturous nightmare for the gentle mother. As a mother my heart cries out for the voiceless Mother, who understands everything, but cannot defend herself or her newborn. She just watches each one as she gives birth to them only to be killed. (Reminds me of Kamsa killing newborns). Who are we if we do not rise up as a community who depends on milk for the love of Krsna, and attempt to minimize the violence and make everyone aware. Yes we can offer and eat prasadam, and we can do it all for Krsna with all the love we can find in our selves, but my innate nature is in defiance of the WAY in which the milk was produced and the mass sin that taints it’s goodness.
I think that if someone has re-introduced an atmosphere of joy and contentment for cows, why not? That is Natihimsa, isn’t it? I think it is more sinful for me to know the injury of another and be silent. I firmly believe that where there is a will there is a way. I think while it may be convenient to use scripture to justify, we can only do so on a theoretical basis. The heart contradicts for very good reason, we are feeling beings. We are intellectual and can understand that there are different degrees of violence. Yes we can argue that violence is violence, but it is also explained in vedic literature that violence is only acceptable under certain circumstances/ conditions.
We can also understand that nothing is ever black and white and there are varying degrees of violence with punishment aptly attached.
I would not feel guilty offering milk to Krsna if I knew the milk was from a cow that is happy, living in natural conditions and free from artificial hormones, and poisons intentionally administered by greedy irreligious, scoundrels. Cows are injected with all kinds of hormones, apparently, that make them ‘think’ they are pregnant.
Continuously I am hounded by vegan propagating newsletters, revealing the cruelties to animals that humans inflict callously. But I am so helpless. I once tried to become vegan…became very stressed by the reality of how much we depend on milk and milk products. All those that I have chatted to seem to not quite hear, devotees say it will be nice to have cow protection and do the right thing, But who is actually doing anything? No one I know of. Everything goes back to the problems of not enough Laxmi, and no skilled workers. Some say if that happen they would only entrust to other devotees. But such thinking will take us no where. Prabhupada is against animal slaughter,- it is not a spiritual or religious ritual. All devotees who are offering supermarket milk can only gain blessings for a few cows by offering milk. But we what about the other billions of lives. So if there is milk produced with less harm to the revered cow, the name that goes on the label is secondary to the good intention behind it. The fact that someone is TRYING to do something good in this circumstance, to me, is a symptom of trying to please God and assist His devotees. If this was being done in my neighborhood I would joyously accept it and celebrate it.
I believe in no harm to others, but I am also very practical in the knowledge that we are all imperfect beings who are striving for perfection, so faults are there in everyone regardless of stature. We can’t avoid killing insects, etc, but I think an act of intent outweighs an act of no intent. This AHIMSA milk to me is an excellent service and just what we need to propagate healthier, mutually beneficial methods of milk production, where the voiceless are not being intentionally exploited and at the end of a ruthless bargain. These are my feelings as an aspiring devotee, a servant of the servant bottom up, and a mother. I wish no offense to anyone either.
ys