meat ethics in india

it is common belief that cows are not consumed in india. i arrived in this country thinking that but found out otherwise. we had a discussion with a local about meat consumption in india. in the cast system brahmans are the only ones required to be vegetarian. it is quite common that the poor consume meat.

back in the day when it was illegal to eat cows the poor farmers or peasants would pay off the police men to eat beef in peace. considering the farmers'/peasants' situations it is quite ethical to consume the cow in a country with such high malnutrition.

also back in the day, at birth often the female calves were killed or consumed at a very young age. the bulls were valued a lot for their ability to do work in the field. now it has become the opposite, the bulls are needed less because of cheap fossil fuels and the females are valued because of the high milk demand. i believe you would find a similar pattern in the united states.

i have yet to see beef on the menu, but you never know. as we venture further north i think we will see more meat on the menu. alexis, a fellow traveler, told us about going to remote villages and the families making her a meal of chicken broth or sauce and these black balls. she was informed by the villagers these black balls were almost completely fiber and were to be soaked in the chicken sauce. she said you couldn't chew them because they would immediately fuse to your teeth.

considering the village was probably half starving she said she could not turn the meal away without being offensive. furthermore, she had to finish the meal as to not be rude and recognize the importance and value of food to those people.

i expect we may run across this situation. despite being vegetarian, i am prepared to eat whatever is offered as long as it's cooked well. i really cannot imagine doing anything else. it is difficult playing with food ethics on such a large scale.

i had a discussion about vegetarianism and ethics with a local man. he had quite a global view, the line he said that has stuck with me the most is: "how can you argue about fertilized and non-fertilized eggs when so many people are hungry? the majority of people eat what they can."

it was a difficult discussion and made my gut turn. it was a shot directly to the heart of my food ethics. he made veganism, the diet i consider most ethical, seem wrong. the fact is that vegans cannot eat entirely local, at least not in maine, without becoming deficient in something. he is right, choice is luxury, but his view was so completely global, a dog-eat-dog view.

i consider local the best and most responsible when teamed up with veganism. obviously these two cannot work together completely, but my buddhist perspective kicks in that i am not greater than a cow, and feel nothing different from a cow or any other creature.

i did not mention it to him, but he did talk about how i could either treat local animals really badly by eating them or treat some humans really badly exploiting them overseas for some stupid exotic fruit.

the day the dog killed the monkey i tried to explain to one of the people involved in the incident (10-year-old Milan) the monkey probably had a heart attack. he looked at me, confused, and said, "monkey has a heart?" india in general seems a bit more distant from animals, especially in dog treatment, compared to the states.

as for conclusion about my current food ethics since that chat, i still prefer vegan/local with some mindful cheating, and for now vegetarianism while i travel. what makes me feel awful about it is i know i am picking the lesser of the two evils, neither is really that close to perfect or fossil fuel-free. it would take the commitment of really going back to the land and networking within a few miles to get relatively close.