When Kamadhenu came out of the churning of the sea as one of the chaturdasa ratnam (fourteen jewels) and the saptarishi (seven sages) claimed her, little did we know of what lay destined for her in the existential scheme of things.
Humanity owes too much to the cow. Human civilisations and economies have been built because of cows. Agriculture, transportation, health, medicine, fuel and food—cows have provided for everything.
But, unlike other parts of the world, the cow has always been like a religion in India. Hindus who worship nature and everything in nature worship cows. They say if you kill a cow, it is equivalent to killing a Brahmin. Killing a cow is a great sin for a majority of Hindus who are vegetarians. Hindus were the first ones to build their culture and economy around the cow, which is evident in the high regard for gau dugdha (cow milk), gau ghrita (pure ghee), gau mutra (cow urine), gau maya (cow dung) and the power of bulls. In fact, bulls provided the only horsepower technology for tilling fields in India for centuries. They are still used for transport, running oil plants, irrigation and construction work.
Astonishingly, billions of bovine animals are also farmed for producing beef. It sends shivers down one’s spine to hear that bovine animals are being farmed for beef today at a speed and scale which have never been seen in the history of the world. The explosion of the human population from 1.8 billion in 1910 to 8 billion today has led to an abnormally high number of beef eaters who are turning the earth’s landscapes into fields of blood.
For Hindus, killing a cow is the greatest sin and killing a cow for beef is a sin far greater. However, the Hindu ethos has been reduced to an oxymoron because of the fact that India is the largest exporter of beef in the world. A science magazine has said that, “You eat a steak, you kill a lemur in Madagascar. You eat a chicken, you kill an Amazonian parrot”. This is because the human appetite for meat is leading to biodiverse forests being turned to pastures. Similarly, killing bovine animals for food is causing rapid and permanent destruction to the environment, extinction of other species, and global warming, which is resulting in more natural disasters.
Animal farming for meat accounts for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions, which is three times more than all transportation put together, and one third of the world’s methane production, which is 85 times deadlier than CO2, which will make our world a permanently hotter place to live in. Cattle farming for beef is responsible for 80% of deforestation, which is resulting in a decreased availability of oxygen, lesser rains and climate warming.
Every year, 77 billion cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and other land animals are killed to produce meat. It takes 15,415 litres of water to produce one kg of beef (while a hamburger costs you 660 gallons of water), 8,763 litres of water for one kg of mutton, 5,988 litres of water for one kg of pork, 4,325 litres of water for one kg of chicken, 3,265 litres of water for one kg of eggs, 962 litres of water for one kg of fruits, and 322 litres for one kg of vegetables. This means that more than 50% of our agriculture production and 50% of water usage goes to the meat eaters.
Moreover, the beef industry is growing fast and is running one of the biggest scams, bigger than the oil or sand mafia, bank frauds or public exchequer scams. Against the 8 billion human population that drinks 5.2 billion gallons of water per day, 1.5 billion cows drink 45 billion gallons of water daily. Meanwhile, against the 8 billion humans who eat 135 billion pounds of food every day, 1.5 billion cows eat just 21 billion pounds of food daily. This means that the beef industry is causing major imbalances in the earth’s resources of food and water, besides affecting the climate. The industry is paralyzing the earth for its so-called economies, and even though we hear a lot of noise from groups touting cowism, the beef industry is thriving in India.
Simply put, beef farming is unsustainable for the planet. Killing animals for the sustainability of food tends to make the planet unsustainable because animal farming will overproduce farmed animals, which shall create an imbalance in the ecological equilibrium of the planet and make other wild animals and plants go extinct by causing enormous deforestation and climate change. If someone says that sustainable farming of animals for meat is the answer, it is a lie, because to do that, we would have to shut down the world to feed billions of animals. The fact of the matter is that neither grass-fed nor farm-fed animal agriculture is sustainable for the earth.
About 10,000 years ago, humans were less than one percent of biomass and the rest were wild animals. Today, humans and land-based vertebrate animals that humans breed for meat constitute 98% of the biomass, while only 2% are wild animals. The planet still grows as much food as is required for 8 billion people without disturbing the landscape and wildlife. But humans craving to devour that packaged slice of beef have grown disturbingly high in number, without realizing that a living animal stacked and branded as SKU in a supermarket is making this planet more unsustainable and threatening the existence of life.
A revolutionary step would come with changing unsustainable food habits and shunning beef-eating to prevent the world from suffering an imminent ecological disaster. Thankfully, humanity is becoming aware of this fact and avoiding unsustainable habits of beef-eating. In Europe and countries like Israel and the US, people are turning vegan and getting hooked to healthier and more ecologically sustainable food options.
What had begun as Kamadhenu and Nandini, who fulfilled the hunger of the seven sages engaged in meditation, has turned into mega-beef factories. With billions of dollars in investment, the best management and technological, scientific and medical practices, humans have learnt to grow the production of beef to an optimal enormity in order to gratify their greed in the name of human needs. History shows that during the regimes of Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and Emperor Maharaja Ranjit Singh, killing a cow was a crime punishable with death to deter people from rearing animals for producing beef. India and the world should wake up to the truths of beef farming and ban the practice.
To end with a beautiful story: When Ramana Maharishi would sit in communion with his disciples, one of his disciples was a cow named Lakshmi. This remarkable cow would reach right on the time, so much so that people would set their clocks at her arrival. On many occasions, Lakshmi would keep looking into Maharishi’s empty eyes, shedding tears, and Maharishi would declare that Lakshmi had gone into samadhi. When Lakshmi died, she embraced death in the state of samadhi, which meant that she left the cycle of life and death.
The author is a spiritual coach and an independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He may be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com.