Every time I bring up the topic of quitting dairy, I get one of the following responses from friends. Where did you get that weird idea from/ Oh it's very difficult to quit dairy/ you can not eat anything if everyone starts thinking like that/ oh come don't you know, you need all those proteins/ at least think about the little one you are feeding, how will she get milk (and this last one keeps making me wonder where did the cow get her milk from?)
I have been thinking over this for a very long time now... I would say almost an year. Finally I have made up my mind to my way to veganism. Quitting dairy is not the easiest thing to do in life.. especially when family, friends and media have always said milk is what you need. It has Protein and Calcium, etc. But who said the life's best decisions were easy. Personally sweet warm milk - is a comforting food for me. But someone is paying a heavy price to comfort me and that someone is not me alone.
Quitting milk, doesn't mean leaving just that pizza, yummy cup of chai, or that panner tikka, or that yummy dollop of ice-cream, or even that nice sweet warm glass of milk at night, or all those kheers or lassi, or ghee on top of the freshly made phooli phooli (round round) roti... it means a radical change in my way I look at food and provide it to my family. When I left meat and eggs 10 years ago, it were not the chicken or any of the other animals that had come to me to say - hey Deepti we are being very badly treated.... please don't eat us. Our beaks and cut off without anesthesia so that we don't harm other chicken due to lack of space to walk around. (I am serious - Not one of them came to me to say that we are being induced with artificial hormones so that we can grow three times our normal weight at twice the speed of our growth rate and that we don't like being in dark confined places just so that we can sleep all day and night and grow fatter faster.) Nor did coke or pepsi come to me and say Deepti did you try cleaning your toilets with us today. Do you know that xyz farmer tried using a can of us in their fields and found the same results that he finds with his pesticides. Oh and when we started our company we wanted our customers to keep coming back, which is why we added cocaine to our drinks For that matter neither of the formula companies make any attempts to tell me - Oh! We have spent billions of dollars on research in the last few decades, trying to make a formula that's even close to mom's milk... but have failed miserably. Please never buy me, if you can feed your child on your own. Do the producers of inorganic vegetables ask you - you moron! insects or pests are far more resistant than you humans. If they can be killed using urea and pesticides - don't you think your body is getting affected too? Did the kellogs cereal say - I am full of HFCS or did the fast food chains come and say - we are full of MSG so that you get so addicted to our tastes that you keep coming back to us. Did the baby wipes tell me why were they not flushable? No! Not becauase the wipe will clog the drainage systems. It's because they have harmful cancer causing chemicals which can pollute our water system and our drinking water. The companies producing and selling never once came to tell me to stop consuming them. After all WHY? And whats common in all of the above and whats any of that got to do with leaving dairy. Just one. Today we live in a consumerist society. The manufacturers are all too happy to meet the demand we as a society are creating, no matter how or at whats costs those demands are meant. The people meeting the demand are not paid by you to take care of their health - that's what supposedly your doctor is for - another questionable debate left for some other day!. They are here to make a profit and make a living for themselves. Be it on moral or ethical costs of humans or other mammals. Now comes the connection - why would the dairy industry ever come and say to me - will you please stop having dairy. It's not good for you. It's upto you to gather the facts and find out what should go inside your body.
History
India is where I come from. Traditionally in Indian villages, animals enjoyed the status of a family member; their birth, sickness and death bringing the same rejoice or grief as that of any other family member. Cows in particular were given the status of a mother, right from her milk to her waste was utilized. Sexual discrimination between calves was absent. If females were raised to become future moms; male calves too were raised to plough fields. Both the male and the female calves had the first and foremost right to their mom's milk. Any surplus which remained thus was then used up by the owner. Because of this unique and delicate balance there was no need to slaughter the surplus cows, because there were none to slaughter.
Since Then...
Things have come a long way since then. With urbanization and modernization, the holy cow has become a commodity. Her male child no longer needed, is kept anemic to produce the while tender veal meat - sold as a delicacy. His leather used for the soft leather sofas and leather car seats. The brain, skulls are other by products which slaughter houses have to some how get rid of are consumed by the cosmetics industry. (The Food and Drug Administration recently told cosmetics makers to stop using the brains and spinal cord tissue from older cows in products like lipstick and hair spray in order to try to prevent the spread of mad cow disease to humans. These same icky ingredients are “OK” if they come from cows younger than 30 months of age.)
In a normal lifespan a cow would produce 3-4 offspring over 20-28 years, producing around 1.25 gallons of milk a day after she delivers her child. Not anything close in today's so called industrialized age. Today the female cow is being artificially inseminated and impregnated repeatedly. She is still lactating when the next pregnancy is forced upon her. This shortens her life to mere 4-6 years. Thus 7 months in an year, the cows is both pregnant and lactating. In addition she is stuffed with the hormone - oxytocin - which makes her produce more than 11 gallons a day; much much more milk than she can otherwise 'manufacture'. Nothing of thing is human. When the male calf is taken away, ignore the physical trauma of separation of a mother from her young one, the mother now whose milk is quickly drying up is put on machines to her udders which keep tugging at her, long after; causing her immense pain and causing mastitis. Inorganic milk; courtesy companies like Monsanto; is even worst. In addition to the oxytocin, cows are also given the hormone rGBH to further increase milk production. This makes the cows super sick. They develop various kinds of infections and start producing pus. To counter effect the infection, the cows are then pumped with antibiotics. The rGBH even makes their bones weak adding to more infections they are caught of as a result. There is no end to the pain and suffering of a cow. So at the receiving end your daily glass of milk or coffee or tea, cup of yogurt, cheese pizza, icecream, paneer tikka(cottage cheese dish), sour cream, cookies etc. contain a cocktail or pus, antibiotics and hormones - all of which in the same milk which was not produced by the cow for YOU in the first place.
The Missing Piece in the Puzzle
You have must realized that suddenly a need has come up to have more and more slaughter houses opened up. Recently there's been a petition floating around to sign-up against the most recent one being planned to open in the state of Uttar Pradesh (birth state of Lord Krishna). India has one of the largest slaughter houses in Andhra Pradesh in Asia (or the world - not sure?) in the recent decade. So coming back to the extra male calves. So do we need so many slaughter houses for the extra male calves? NO. It's to get rid of all those useless female cows, which can no longer produce milk or babies after that tireless and continuous baby production and milk production business. God give peace to their souls, at least after death. Because if you thought this was all, you are wrong. In their lives, cows are made to stand their entire lives in one place, so that they can grow bigger and fatter. They dung is cleaned once a day and so they stand knee deep in their own feces, breeding more than just the e-coli bacteria, than one can imagine. Ultimately when these cows are sent to slaughter houses, no matter how nicely they are washed off...the e-coli still stays on them... which is passed to your hamburger (in the beef eating countries) Ever since American kids have started dying from the e-coli, the industry has found an innovative method. Treat the beef with ammonium-nitrate before being sold!! (By the way did you know that 'fertilizers' containing that substance have been banned in many contries)
Close your eyes for 5 seconds. Put one human being in place of just one cow and try to imagine the pain and suffering. Now multiply that pain and suffering with the millions of cows being tortured all over the world every second. And if all of this still does not move you, let me tell you something that will. You think your body needs all that protein. Well protein deficiency is such a rare condition, that there is no medical terminology for that word. Now what else - did you say you need calcium. Let me tell you - today's milk has way too much acid that your body can handle and the same bones which you think you are helping with are gradually disappearing because the bones have to release more alkaline calcium to balance the acidic pH of the body. Not only calcium, many other minerals leech out of your bones too. Speaking of which you can argue - we have had milk for thousands of years. If you come from the same country to which I belong to - you would even argue, Lord Krishna had butter himself. Milk and it's products are an inherent part of that food and culture. But my answer to that - I can only wish to have the kind of milk Lord Krishna and his friends had... but alas today there is none. Milk was the perfect food at one time, not any more today. We are not raising the same breeds of cows. The ones being raised lack the properties to produce satvik milk. Just remember as human milk is for the human and not for the cows... giraffe's milk is for the giraffe, bear's milk is for the bear, cows milk is good for the calves and not for humans any longer.
What Should I do? Where Should I Start From?
1. READ. READ. READ.
2. The first thing is to make informed choices of what to eat and what not to eat. It's not easy to break a generations old mindset of advice that milk is good for you. Be it for your own health reasons or for ethical reasons - be sure of what and why you are consuming something.
3. Start thinking of all the dairy products that you consume at your home, outside and at your friends place and make a list of the ones you can start eliminating easily. Then deal with the more tough ones.
4. Start slowly and do it one step at a time.
5. Also start reading labels of the groceries shelves. Demand for more vegan products. Demand drives the supply.
To have some of your doubts cleared, go here - indianvegan faq
Dairy is all over my kitchen. Where should I start.
Here are some Vegan Food blogs, to get some ideas to get started.
tongueticklers/ Join Via Facebook Here
hobbyandmore/ Join Via Facebook Here
holycowvegan/ Join Via Facebook Here
veganosaurus Join Via Facebook Here
vegweb
sanjeevkapoor
sharan-india.org/vegan-recipes
indianvegan recipes
tarladalal
thegreenstove
petaindia recipes
More Links
https://www.facebook.com/groups/indianvegans/
http://www.daiyafoods.com/
Where can I get more info
indianvegan
notmilk
meetyourmeat
sharan-india.org
Animal RIghts Fund India.org
daff.gov.au
Animal Aid Unlimited
change.org petitions male-calves-being-killed-for-profit/a>
DrFox's blog
The Vegetarian Resource Group
Help Animals India Join Via Facebook Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QacVRLG0Pec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBBFTpTMUbc&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYpafipJyDE&NR=1
In the life I have lived so far, I have done a great deal of contribution towards the torture of the dead male calf, the live female calf and their mother. It's time I changed and make an attempt to be that one drop in the ocean who stands up against cruelty towards the helpless speach-less cow who can not stand up for itself. It's up to you to read, ignore and continue to be on the side of exploiting animals wondering what can you do - after all isn't everyone else doing the same too? Or it's up to make an informed decision; to choose to be another drop in that ocean towards breaking the endless cycle of demand and supply and putting an end to this heartless cruelty.
