Dr. Sulekh Chand Jain
Now please read this. This should be an eye opener. By the rule of nature, cows give birth to male and female babies in a near fifty-fifty proportion. In present days, due to electricity, tractors, the mechanization of agriculture and transportation of goods, 90% of these cows’ male offspring (calves) have no more humane societal and economic use and hence are only an economic burden. As a result, just after birth, male calves are sold to slaughterhouses for tender meat such as veal; thus, the life of a calf can be counted in hours, days, or weeks only.
In India, USA and all over the world, since the use of milk and dairy products has increased at least tenfold and keeps on increasing every day, so has the number of cows and the male calves bred for this use. As we consume more dairy products, we need more cows and consequently we are breeding more male calves with their only journey in life directly to slaughterhouses. The male calf has only one fate, to be slaughtered shortly after birth to become an item on a non- vegetarian’s food plate. Thus the cycle continues. The cry of the calf is real. Are we willing to listen and pay attention to it?
If I were a calf, I will speak to the Jains, saying, “My Jain friends, you the keeper of ahimsa, why do you drink my mother’s milk? Do you know how much my mother suffers because you want her milk? You snatch away 70-80% of my mother’s milk —which was meant for me. Not only that, my mother goes to the slaughterhouse to be killed when she stops producing anymore milk, but I don’t even get a chance to live. As soon as I am born, right away, or within a few weeks, I am taken to the slaughterhouse, get killed, and become flesh-food on someone’s plate. How long should my mother and I suffer because you want her milk? Oh, Jains, if all of you would stop using dairy products in any shape or form, you would be saving so many of us calves from that slaughter and my mother from lifelong cruelty.”
If one looks at the total himsa involved in the production of milk, it is safe to say that milk is a himsak product. Some may even argue that in meat production, the animal goes through less suffering than the prolonged suffering that a cow goes through for giving us milk; hence, in terms of suffering for the animal, milk is more himsak than meat. In my opinion, both are equally cruel and torturous to the animal.
Please note: the reader should not assume that all milk production in general today is humane and ahimsak anywhere in the world. What is true about milk production in India is also true in nearly every part of the world.
