Does Krishna Like Milk From Unprotected Cows?

By Radhe Radhe devi dasi


I just read this article on Dandavats and it encouraged me to hurry up and write an article that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. Most of the information in this article is from Peta, the vegan society, and http://www.milksucks.com/ (I know, not a nice name, but they have some good info).

One of the first things I heard when I met the devotees was “you can’t be a vegan devotee.” This is because Krishna loves milk and milk products and devotees love to offer them to him.
The problem is that the milk we (in the cities) are offering to Krishna is not pure. As Jahnava mataji said last Saturday, actually all foods in Kali Yuga are considered to be impure.
Krishna doesn’t just love milk, Krishna loves cows. So how does he feel if we are offering him grocery store milk that is laden with antibiotics and growth hormones—milk that comes from cows that are abused and mistreated and finally sent to the slaughterhouse?
To give milk the cow must be pregnant and then have a calf. On both organic and non-organic farms, cows are kept continuously pregnant. On non-organic farms mother cows are treated like machines, chained by their necks in concrete stalls for months at a time, their udders are swollen so large that they sometimes drag on the ground. Cows give milk for the same reasons humans do—to feed their babies. To keep milk production high, cows are kept pregnant by artificial insemination and their male calves are taken away at 1-2 days old and chained inside cramped dark crates to be killed for veal. The milk meant for them is what we buy on the grocery shelves. They are not even given a chance to drink their mother’s milk.

It is too easy to turn a blind eye to what goes on behind the grocery store shelves. After all, how can we not offer milk sweets to Krishna? How will the Sunday feast go on without sweet rice?
But how can we offer milk sweets to Krishna using milk that (unless organic) contains hormones, antibiotics, disease, blood, fish and who knows what else? Cows are so dear to Lord Krishna that I just cannot imagine he would want to taste milk from cows so horribly abused, or even if not abused (organic cows), nevertheless sent to the slaughterhouse.

The ideal is, as Sivarama Swami says, to support the Iskcon farms in their efforts to protect the cows and offer pure milk to Krishna. But for those of us who live far from farms and must buy milk from the store, it seems that abstaining from milk products is the only choice. A vegan diet is the only option for cow protection living in the city.

Find the full article at http://namahatta.org/nh2/en/node/5535