Vegans conduct anti-cow milk drive

Domalguda: An innovative campaign, social experiment was undertaken in over 50 Indian cities across India to help the public reflect upon the dark realities of the dairy industry and to reconsider their consumption of milk products on Sunday at Indira Park.

Volunteers approached morning walkers in Indira park in a social experiment that involved offering them plant- based vegan milk. At first, the campaigners pretended that the milk being offered was dog milk. Most passers-by were disgusted by the thought of drinking dog milk. They were horrified when the volunteers proceeded to talk about the repeated pregnancies, confinement, starving and slaughter of the male babies who cannot produce milk and other atrocities that any viable animal milk production system inevitably involves. The rationale behind using the guise of dog milk was to help people break out of the apathy and misconceptions that exist about dairy consumption in general.

The campaigners detailed how consuming the milk of any animal cow, buffalo or dog, is a terrible idea because of the immense suffering it causes to the animals and the unsuitability of one species’ milk for another. The campaign concluded with broader facts about veganism, which refers to the avoidance of all animal-based choices to the highest extent practically possible, and left many people seriously considering changes.

“Instead a life of freedom that every animal longs for, the billions of animals exploited by humans for food, clothing, entertainment and experimentation are forced into a life of confinement. There are other forms of physical and emotional suffering caused by our choices too. In the case of milk, cows and buffaloes are artificially impregnated repeatedly in order to keep the milk flowing, causing unimaginable physical trauma to the animal. Further, since the male babies are useless for milk production, they are often left to die of starvation and sometimes sent to the leather industry only to be skinned alive for their ‘tender’ leather.

Another common practice is to inject oxytocin into the cow or buffalo so that the animal produces an unnaturally high quantity of milk, causing immense pain to the animal and making the milk harmful to human health”, said VSL Sowmya, auditor at Deloitte. Non-vegetarian turned vegan Sameer, who works as a financial analyst, said, “Consuming animal milk is completely unnecessary for human health. All major nutritional bodies state that, as a vegan, one can get all the required nutrients including calcium and protein in adequate quantities to stay perfectly healthy.

In fact, as substantiated by the nutritional experts of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, milk protein actually leaches calcium from the bones, resulting in bone weakness. Furthermore, humans absorb only 32 per cent of the calcium in cow’s milk. These observations explain why the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis (bone weakness) are those with the highest consumption of dairy products. Plus, animal foods are alarmingly high in antibiotics, pus and pesticides. The pesticide concentration is much higher in milk, eggs and meat than that in vegetables.”

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics writes that vegan diets are "not only appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, but they also help reduce the risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, obesity, and some types of cancer". Volunteer Brinda, who has a PhD in zoology, states, “We are the only species that consume another species’ milk. Moreover, every other mammal except humans weans off mother’s milk once they are able to start consuming solid food. The hormonal composition of cow’s milk is highly unsuitable for human bodies. Animal milk is also known to give rise to health issues such as asthma, sinus, flu, bronchitis, and so on.”

“Sandeep, a software engineer said “Many of us hesitate in exploiting dogs or humans while simultaneously making choices that needlessly torment other animals. We know that it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, caste, gender, sexuality and so on. It fair to harm animals on the basis of species. Like sexism, racism and casteism, speciesism is a form of discrimination that fuels the exploitation of sentient beings on the ethically irrelevant basis of their species. We have a duty to eliminate this oppression too.”