http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52331-back-to-being-a-vegetarian.html
Indians must return to their old roots on diet. Both nature and humankind will be better off
The Supreme Court recently issued a directive to ensure that
all States set up a committee for slaughterhouses within a month. It is
part of the effort to monitor abattoirs.
But the very practice of butchering creatures for pleasure and gain is
antithetical to the Indic worldview. Dominance of the utilitarian
principle in economics ensures optimum use of living species for profit.
Colonial rule over a long period introduced the malaise into India,
with post-independence rulers carrying on with the Raj legacy.
The Chinese Buddhist monk Fa-Hien, who visited northern India in the
early fifth century AD, stated in A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, Being
an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and
Ceylon in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline: “In India, except
for Chandals, nobody indulges in violence against animals or consumes
liquor or other intoxicants. No one trades in live animals. There are no
shops in the entire country which sell liquor or meat. Only the
Chandals indulge in hunting or consuming meat and liquor”.
Chandals were people that lived outside the social fold because they
deployed living creatures for food and commerce. They also disposed of
remains of the dead. Modern civilisation rests on such moorings.
Worldwide lobbying against flesh-based diet has received a boost from a
recent report, prepared by eminent water scientists. Malik Falkenmark
and his colleagues from the Stockholm International Water Institute
predict in their study that by 2050, acute water scarcity would compel
the world to turn vegetarian. There would then be just enough water to
support five per cent protein intake, derived from animals. People
currently source about 20 per cent protein from animal-based food. The
projected human population for that time being nine billion, the
pressure to feed the additional two billion would take a heavy toll on
existing water resources. The warning needs to be clubbed with forecasts
of an impending food crisis by the United Nations and Oxfam.
This, of course, is the utilitarian reason for shunning animal protein.
Processing and production of such food entails five to 10 times more
use of water than a vegetarian diet, with an estimated one- third of
arable land diverted to growing food for animals, meant for slaughter.
Other arguments against animal protein hinge on the health hazards
posed by such diet, and green house gas emissions by livestock and
poultry, magnifying global warming to an alarming degree. Given below is
a relevant excerpt from a 2009 scientific study, titled Comparing
environmental impacts for lifestyle products: A review of life cycle
assessments, prepared by Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
“The total agricultural sector emits around 25 to 32 per cent of global
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Crops emit 14 per cent... and
all livestock emit 11 to-18 per cent, depending on how emissions are
attributed... The emissions from livestock can be divided roughly as 30
per cent methane from enteric fermentation, 30 per cent nitrous oxide
from manure management and 40 per cent from carbon dioxide from land-use
changes for grazing and feed production... the dairy sector is
responsible for roughly 27 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from
livestock... while monogastric production (pigs/poultry) is responsible
for 10 to 20 per cent of the livestock emissions... Even if beef cattle
represent 50 to 60 per cent of livestock emissions, this translates
roughly into a figure close to 30 to 35 per cent of all agricultural
emissions... What is true is that of all livestock products, beef is the
most inefficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions produced per unit
of product, especially compared to dairy and monogastrics”.
Beef production, as compared to other livestock products, adds most to
greenhouse gas emissions. But neither this fact nor outbreak of mad cow
disease in the West, with the UK being most badly hit, has managed to
change dietary habits to a substantial degree. It is a fatal
neuro-degenerative ailment, transmitted to humans as variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, if they consume infected beef. The disease
erupted after cattle, which are naturally herbivore, were fed remains of
other livestock. The abnormal fallout of going against nature led to
millions of cattle being eradicated in the UK after the malady was
diagnosed in the late 1980s. Despite the beef industry’s claims of
rigorous quality control, reports have filtered out of BSE cases in
North America.
The link between myriad degenerative diseases and factory farming of
livestock and poultry is now well known. John Robbins, spurning his
legacy of the ice cream empire Baskin Robbins, has penned some revealing
books, notably Diet for a New America that unveils the gruesome truth
about the meat industry and severe repercussions for mankind, animals
and environment; and The Food Revolution, triggering fierce rebuttals by
opponents of his uncompromising advocacy of diet that is plant-based
and organic. Given these facts, India too must revert to its roots in
terms of diet, and regard for life and nature.
