Yesterday I wrote about Mark Zuckerberg and his idea to eat only meat of animals that he killed himself. I mentioned that in my opinion one possible reason for this idea was the history of the meat that you can usually buy at the supermarket or even at the local butchers.
Apart from the fact that it is medically better for you to have a balanced vegetarian nutrition than eating meat, there are reasons for being vegetarian that have more to do with the way that animals are kept nowadays.
Let me describe you the ideal way that any meat-eater would hope that his meat comes to his plate. There is a young calf, born to a happy mother-cow in a big farm in the mountain area. It grows up, drinking milk from the mother, being brought up by its mother but also the loving farmer. Each day, the farmer brings the calf and its family to the meadows where it can eat fresh grass and herbs. It grows and gets stronger and stronger. One day, the butcher comes to the farm and without any pain or fear to this animal, kills it, ideally even praying for it and thanking God and nature for the life he takes. He brings the meat to the market where it is sold as freshly as possible and without any further treatment.
This however, my dear friends, is not the reality. It is only an illusion and not the history of the meat on your plate. It may have been, many years ago, when the towns were smaller and when there was less demand for meat. The lifestyle of cows even was similar in my childhood, when we and several neighbours had cows and a person who took care of them. He picked them up at our home in the morning and brought them to the forest or on meadows. In the afternoon or evening he brought them back and we milked them.
These days however calves are being born in the hundreds on big livestock farms that have thousands of pieces of cattle. The calves are separated from their mothers right after birth and grow fast and fat with hormone injections given daily or weekly. Milk cows additionally get injections for a bigger milk production. They have a space of maybe three square meters where they can hardly lie down and where it is impossible for them to turn around. They see the open sky maybe once in their lives – on the way to the butcher’s house. The selected cows are brought there, beaten to the right way, their shrieks and cries of fear and pain are ignored. They are slaughtered in the most brutal ways, often without care whether they are quickly dead or if they die slowly and with much pain. Their meat is taken, stuffed full of chemicals to make it look fresher, better and to preserve it longer and sometimes it is mixed with waste to increase the amount. Then it travels long ways on lorries to get it to supermarkets where it may lie around several weeks until you finally buy and eat it.
Do you really think this is good? Do you really want to eat this meat?
It is not only cows! Chicken are sitting on top of each other in tiny cages, their beaks cut off, their feet and wings crippled, just laying eggs and, when of no use anymore, killed for being eaten. Pigs are produced en masse, stuffed with hormones and chemicals to make them fat and then killed in similar ways. The list goes on with all other animals that are kept in mass stock and merely for being eaten.
You eat all their pain, their misery, the cruelty, their fear, the hormones, chemicals, preservatives and their death along with their meat.
This is happening all over the world. Even in India, where Hinduism once protected cows from this fate, this is what is now in many places reality. Cows were considered holy but then there was a business, a demand for their meat and with it the idea to put them in a cage and produce more and more and more. The religious feelings all vanished and what is left in the end is the cruelty of humans who ignore nature, animals and everything around them in a greed for more wealth.
Don’t support this greed. Don’t support their cruelty. Live a vegetarian life. If you eat eggs and drink milk, take care from where it comes. Don’t eat meat. It is not good for you and not good for the world.
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Swamiji..yet again very touching post. Though I am a non-vegetarian, I agree with whatever you wrote. But honestly, I wanted to give up this habit in the past but I was unable to do so. I don’t know why is it so. How can I…please help me out if possible!
Dear Aswani,Thank you for your comment. I am happy to hear that you want to become vegetarian. The first thing is that I don’t think it is an addiction for which you have to do training to stop it. It is only your decision.
In order to make your decision strong, I would recommend reading more about vegetarianism, for example what I wrote about it:
Blog about Vegetarian Life
It is good for your health, environment, for nature and everything, you just have to make a decision and have willpower to do it.
sensitivity or insensitivity can be independent of dietary habits. When a person’s consciousness is so shallow that it can be blown off by dietary habits, obviously methods of that shallowness have to be implemented.
Sensitivity differs from person to person and how it paves way to an individual’s path, has more than to do with ‘morals’ or ‘love-kill logic’ . If one has to live by this mediocre ‘love-kill logic’, years of repentance penance for the sin of killing plants, is not enough.