Looking beyond milk

It’s heart wrenching to see cows, bulls & their young calves roaming on the roads of our country as stray animals & dying in accidents. Some scholars would say why worry only about cattle, there are other stray animals also on the road then why this distinction & quickly turn it down as a religious/political concern rather than tackling this issue on its own merit.

But there is a difference & a very big one indeed. Of all the stray animals, cattle are the only ones which were not born as stray, in fact 95% of the stray cattle that we see on the roads are born out of artificial insemination which means that having a baby was not cow’s choice but something that was forced on her by us humans just so that a cow can produce milk for us. If this was not bad enough, once cow stops giving milk (after 9-10 months) or the calf is big enough to start grazing, we throw her calf out of the house. As a dairy entrepreneur this really makes me feel disgusting & inhuman to say the least.

In a dairy industry, farmers are told that they should get a calf from a cow every year so that the cow can keep giving milk. Have we forgotten that a cow is also a living being & not a machine. Carrying a child & giving birth is not an easy task, it takes a big toll on the cow but we feel pride in forcing that on a cow every year. It’s time we change & start giving the due respect this gentle animal deserves; it’s time we start looking beyond milk as the only value addition a cow can provide.

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