Vasu Murti's blog

Regarding vegetarianism vs. veganism, man is the only species that drinks the milk of another species. All other species drink the milk of the mothers of their own species until they are weaned. Cow's milk is the perfect food—if you're a baby calf!

To mass produce cow's milk on a large scale via factory farming, cows have to be kept continually pregnant, giving birth, and lactating. The cows are genetically bred to produce excess cow's milk for humans. Male cows (bulls) are useless to the dairy industry, so they become veal. By supporting the dairy industry, one indirectly supports cow killing.

There was an article on veganism on namahatta.org by a vegan British devotee, in which she pointed out that Lord Krishna loves the cows, not the milk. Again, by supporting the dairy industry, one indirectly supports cow killing. Vegetarians do cause far less animal cruelty than meat-eaters, but Srila Prabhupada's teachings on non-violence would carry greater weight if we went vegan.

Follow up:

"If one kills many thousands of animals in a professional way so that other people can purchase the meat to eat, one must be ready to be killed in a similar way in his next life and life after life. There are many rascals who violate their own religious principles. According to Judeo-Christian scriptures, it is clearly said, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Nonetheless, giving all kinds of excuses, even the heads of religions indulge in killing animals while trying to pass as saintly persons. This mockery and hypocrisy in human society brings about unlimited calamities; therefore occasionally there are great wars. Masses of such people go out onto battlefields and kill themselves. Presently, they have discovered the atomic bomb, which is simply waiting to be used for wholesale destruction."

(Caitanya Caritamrita, Madhya 24.251, purport)

"Real philosophy is nothing more than this: friendliness to all living entities." Elsewhere, Srila Prabhupada writes, "If people are to be educated in the path back to Godhead, they must be taught first and foremost to stop the process of animal-killing."

Similarly, in his purport to the Srimad Bhagavatam 6.10.9, Srila Prabhupada writes:

"One cannot continue killing animals and at the same time be a religious man. That is the greatest hypocrisy. Jesus Christ said, 'Do not kill,' but hypocrites nevertheless maintain thousands of slaughterhouses while posing as Christians. Such hypocrisy is condemned..."

Srila Prabhupada taught that nonviolence is the first principle in spiritual life (Letter to Bhakta das, August 3, 1973). Srila Prabhupada not only opposed killing animals for food, he opposed killing animals for sport and animal experimentation.

On numerous occasions, Srila Prabhupada taught us that even rodents and insects have rights, and (like Pythagoras) he even opposed the unnecessary destruction of trees. These facts indicate that devotees of Krishna are vegetarian out of compassion for animals, and not just because meat, fish and eggs are unofferable to Lord Krishna. It is a significant fact that Srila Prabhupada did not reject any of his fallen disciples, as long as they did not return to flesh-eating. Like Lord Caitanya's dialogue with the Chand Kazi, this underscores the importance of vegetarianism to the sankirtana movement.

"To be nonviolent to human beings and to be a killer or enemy of the poor animals is Satan's philosophy. In this age there is enmity towards poor animals, and therefore the poor creatures are always anxious. The reaction of the poor animals is being forced on human society, and therefore there is always the strain of cold or hot war between men, individually, collectively or nationally."

(Srimad Bhagavatam 1.10.6)

The karmis, especially, exactly, are ready to find fault with us in this regard: do we love all animals, or only some animals (e.g., cows) and not others? And if we really do love the cows, why do we contribute to their death and suffering just to drink their milk?

Can children be raised without cow's milk? YES! Half the world's population (blacks and Asians in particular) are lactose intolerant, and can't digest milk after infancy. Dr. Michael Klaper has written books on vegan nutrition, pregnancy, and childbirth.

War, like abortion, is the karmic reaction for killing animals. Srila Prabhupada said in 1974:

"We simply request, 'Don't kill. Don't maintain slaughterhouses.' That is very sinful. It brings a very awkward karmic reaction upon society. Stop these slaughterhouses. We don't say, 'Stop eating meat.' You can eat meat, but don't take it from the slaughterhouse, by killing. Simply wait (until the animal dies of natural causes) and you'll get the carcasses.

"You are killing innocent cows and other animals—nature will take revenge. Just wait. As soon as the time is right, nature will gather all these rascals and slaughter them. Finished. They'll fight among themselves—Protestants and Catholics, Russia and America, this one and that one. It is going on. Why? This is nature's law. Tit for tat. 'You have killed. Now you kill yourselves.'

"They are sending animals to the slaughterhouse, and now they'll create their own slaughterhouse. You see? Just take Belfast. The Roman Catholics are killing the Protestants, and the Protestants are killing the Catholics. This is nature's law. It is not necessary that you be sent to the ordinary slaughterhouse. You'll make a slaughterhouse at home. You'll kill your own child—abortion. This is nature's law.

"Who are these children being killed? They are these meat-eaters. They enjoyed themselves when so many animals were killed and now they're being killed by their own mothers. People do not know how nature is working. If you kill you must be killed. If you kill the cow, who is your mother, then in some future lifetime your mother will kill you. Yes. The mother becomes the child, and the child becomes the mother.

"We don't want to stop trade, or the production of grains and vegetables and fruit. But we want to stop these killing houses. It is very, very sinful. That is why all over the world they have so many wars. Every ten or fifteen years there is a big war—a wholesale slaughterhouse for humankind. But these rascals—they do not see it, that by the law of karma, every action must have its reaction."

Establishing Krishna conscious farm communities is a solution to the problem of animal cruelty, but again, Srila Prabhupada's teachings on nonviolence would carry greater weight if we went vegan.

One of the first books I read on the subject of vegetarianism while in college was A Vegetarian Sourcebook by Keith Akers (1983). Describing the environmental damage caused by raising animals for food: topsoil erosion, deforestization, loss of groundwater, etc. as well as the economic inefficiency and waste of energy and resources in raising animals for food in an age of exploding human population growth, Keith Akers foreshadowed John Robbins' Diet for a New America (1987), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

In A Vegetarian Sourcebook, Keith Akers writes:

"Using grasslands for livestock agriculture creates great environmental problems, which greatly limit its usefulness. Grazing systems require ten times more land than feedlot agriculture, in which animals are simply given feed grown on cropland. Grazing systems have to be extensive in order to avoid the catastrophic consequences of overgrazing—which renders a piece of land unsuitable for any purpose.

"Overgrazing and the consequent soil erosion are extremely serious problems worldwide. By the most conservative estimates, 60% of all U.S. rangelands are overgrazed, with billions of tons of soil lost each year. Overgrazing has also been the greatest cause of man-made deserts.

"Even if we grant grazing a role in a resource-efficient, ecologically stable agriculture, milk should be the end result, not beef.  Milk provides over 50% of the protein and nearly four times the calories of beef, per unit of forage resources from grazing.

"'When only forage is available, then egg, broiler and pork production are eliminated and only milk, beef, and lamb production are viable systems,' state David and Marcia Pimentel, scientists and authors of Food, Energy and Society. "Of these three, milk production is the most efficient.'

"An ecologically stable, resource-efficient system of grazing animals for human food could not be anything faintly resembling today's livestock agriculture. It would be a smaller, decentralized, less intensive system of animal husbandry devoted to milk production."

This is what the Vedas say as well: an acre of land, a cow and a bull, and you're all set! The Vedas also warn that when a population is sinful, their land becomes a desert...and overgrazing does lead to topsoil erosion, which in turn leads to desert-ification. So it may be possible to have animal agriculture (devoted solely to milk production) on a small scale—like the Amish. And this is what Srila Prabhupada wanted for ISKCON! Rural farm communities like Gita-nagari.

Following Srila Prabhupada, devotees tend to preach vegetarianism in the same context as cow protection, establishing rural farm communities, the four regs, 16 rounds, rising early, worshipping the Deities, offering sattvic foodstuffs to the Deities, kirtana, studying scripture, yoga, meditation, astrology, Ayurveda, etc...Sermonizing in the mood of Gandhi or Tolstoy; the mode of goodness.

Animal activists, on the other hand, are into demonstrations, leafleting, circulating petitions, boycotting, writing letters and e-mails to heads of corporations and elected officials, political debate, etc...This is all in the mode of passion. But we share common ground when it comes to educating the public about compassion for animals.

There are pro-life vegetarians and vegans.  The animal rights movement is divided on the abortion issue. This was made clear by Ingrid Newkirk, Executive Director of PETA, in a 1992 interview with conservative talk show host Dennis Prager in Los Angeles. In either 1997 or 1998, the Animals' Agenda ran a cover story about the debate within the animal rights movement over abortion.

And in either 2003 or 2004, on the Democrats-For-Life e-list, Maria Krasinski mentioned a poll that found animal activists evenly divided over the abortion issue. This is significant. It means that animal rights really is a bipartisan cause—one which conservatives as well as liberals can support, or it means that many liberals are uncomfortable with abortion.

Regarding animal rights and prenatal rights: John Stuart Mill wrote: "The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves—the animals."

Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), successfully prosecuted a woman for child abuse in 1873, at a time when children had no legal protection, under the then currently existing animal protection statutes. This case started the child-saving crusade around the world.

Cardinal John Heenan wrote in 1970: "Animals...have very positive rights because they are God's creatures...Only the perverted are guilty of deliberate cruelty to animals or, indeed, to children."

In both cases, we're discussing extending rights to an excluded class of beings; beings on the fringes of our moral community, which are sometimes accorded only marginal personhood, which is inconsistent at best.

For example, the unborn are considered children only if they are "wanted", and animals like pets are considered part of the family, while other animals are considered "food," clothing, subjects of medical research, etc.

I think it may have been law professor Gary Francione who said back in 1988, "I'm sure there's some way we can keep abortion legal," and though I'm sick of hearing pro-lifers use this single quote from one individual nearly 20 years ago as an excuse not to support animal rights, there is a ring of truth to it. Jeremy Bentham wrote: "The question is not Can they talk? nor Can they reason? but Can they Suffer?" If sentience, or the ability to feel pain, rather than membership in the human race, is the criterion for personhood, then "there's some way we can keep abortion legal."

I mentioned this to Rachel MacNair, past president of Feminists For Life, a Quaker pacifist, vegan, and psychology professor, in 2004. It didn't faze her. "Only in the very early stages of pregnancy," would abortion be legal, she replied. A 1981 article by UC Berkeley law professor John T. Noonan, Jr. entitled "The Experience of Pain by the Unborn," similarly observes:

"...we may conclude that as soon as a pain mechanism is present in the fetus—possibly as early as day 56—the (abortion) methods used will cause pain. The pain is more substantial and lasts longer the later the abortion is."

Carol Crossed, who is now president of Democrats For Life, and who wrote the foreword to my own book, The Liberal Case Against Abortion, noted approvingly back in 1995, that even with sentience, rather than membership in the human race, as the criterion for personhood, day 56 as the threshold for pain means most abortions would have to be outlawed.

Srila Prabhupada said about abortion:

"Who are these children being killed? They are these meat-eaters. They enjoyed themselves when so many animals were killed, and now they're being killed by their own mothers. People do not know how nature is working. If you kill, you must be killed. If you kill the cow who is your mother, then in some future lifetime your mother will kill you. Yes. The mother becomes the child, and the child becomes the mother."

If we really want to end abortion, or war for that matter, we should educate the public to go vegetarian or vegan.