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6 Oct, 2015

Holy cow, unholy violence – The Hindu

If you love cows and care for them, you have three choices:

Choice A: Build goshalas or cow shelters where the animals can be taken care of. But this is an expensive proposition. There is heavy investment and no returns whatsoever, despite all the talk of the great medicinal value of cow urine and cow dung.

Choice B: Ban beef, stop farmers from selling cows and bulls to butchers, outlaw the culling of cattle, punish cow smugglers, declare all slaughter houses illegal, lynch people who eat beef, and justify all this using complex arguments. This results in a large number of cows (which can no longer give milk) and bulls or oxen (that are too weak to be draught animals), being abandoned to simply wander the streets eating garbage and plastic or just starving to death since Choice A is unavailable. It also destroys industries and creates widespread unemployment.

Choice C: Build local slaughterhouses near farms so that commercially unviable cattle can be humanely culled nearby, without their having to endure great suffering while being transported in horrible conditions to distant slaughterhouses. This controversial suggestion was made by none other than N.S. Ramaswamy, founder-director of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and noted animal rights activist.

Guess which is the preferred option of the rising multitude of go-raksha vigilantes?

Read the rest: Holy cow, unholy violence – The Hindu