Rohit (the dairy farmer) was talking to me about the cows he raises and the cows that are in the streets in India. This man has a passion for what he does and is very progressive in his practices, even in the USA!
Millions of Hindus revere and worship cows. Hinduism is a religion that raises the status of Mother to the level of Goddess. Therefore, the cow is considered a sacred animal, as it provides us life sustaining milk. The cow is seen as a maternal figure, a care taker of her people. The cow is a symbol of the divine bounty of earth.
The streets here in Varanasi are filled with cows and bulls. The do not move very much and when they do they are very sluggish. Is that a normal way of being for an animal? Not really? For the untrained eye the behavior of these animals in the streets seem pretty normal. For the trained person (Rohit) it is another story.
When something happens to a cow, like a health issue or they stop producing milk, it is illegal to slaughter them. Most Hindu’s do not eat meat because of the history of the sacredness of the animal. So they let them go into the streets where they eat all kinds of things they should not be eating… plastics. These plastics wind up in their stomachs and are indigestible and accumulate over time unable to be eliminated from the animal. Eventually the animal will die without surgery and post-surgical treatment.
If the cow is such a sacred animal, then why do the Indian people allow things like this to happen? It’s a good question to ponder. It’s a similar question about the treatment of agricultural farm animals in the USA. If animals aren’t happy being tied up or kept in pens, then why do we do it? For our own personal gain?
We have lost our values around the ethical treatment of animals in farming and agriculture. All you have to do is google “smithfield pork drone video” or “ethical treatment of dairy cows”. I realize there are farmers like Rohit that have a passion for the animals, plants and the earth. Seeing Rohit love his cows has been an eye opener for me to stop eating meat altogether based on these values/ethics that our culture seems not to adhere to.
Isn’t it time to do something more about this issue on a bigger scale?
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