From: kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Cow-killing Economics
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 02:54:20 EST
Reply-To: kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us
Organization: Kalki's Infoline BBS, Aiken, SC, USA


From Back to Godhead magazine January/February 1992

The Origins of Cow-Killing Economics -- Part I
By Hare Krsna Devi Dasi

(c) 1992 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust

The Bhagavad-gita specifically instructs us, krsi-go-raksya: we human
beings must protect the cow, our milk-giving mother. Go-raksya
--"protect the cow." Not go-hatya --"kill the cow." This is most sinful.
                                               - Srila Prabhupada

As I discussed in my last column, Lord Krsna says in Bhagavad-gita that
the activities of the productive class of society should be
krsi-go-raksya-vanijyam: agriculture, cow protection, and trade.
Agriculture gives us grains. Cow protection gives us milk and the oxen
to produce the grains. And trade, which comes about naturally when
there's surplus production, benefits the farmer and the rest of society.

Grains and cows are an important basis of wealth, not only in the
spiritual culture advocated by Lord Krsna but also in modern
materialistic economics. The crucial difference is that the center of
the spiritual economic system is cow protection, and the center of the
materialistic system is cow killing.

In this series, we'll examine how cow killing became an important part
of the modern economic system. As this brief history unfolds, note how
slaughtering the cow, pushing the ox out of work, and stoking up
production for centralized marketing and money-grabbing have led us to
the present precarious state of affairs.

As we drive down the road and see many prosperous hamburger chains, we
may take it for granted that cow slaughter has always been a basic
feature of civilizations outside India. But that is not the case. The
ancient Egyptians prohibited cow slaughter. The Hebrews, among others,
restricted it to religious sacrifices. Still today, the pastoral peoples
of East Africa slaughter cattle only during rituals and ceremonies. And
in modern communist China, even Mao Zedong himself observed, "Draft oxen
are a treasure to the peasants. As it is practically a religious tenet
that 'Those who slaughter cattle in this life will themselves become
cattle in the next,' draft oxen must never be killed."

One might ask how an avowed atheistic leader such as Mao Zedong could
have allowed himself to support a religious belief against killing oxen?
Anthropologist Marvin Harris suggests that religious and ritual
restrictions on cow slaughter and eating of cow flesh were not
irrational laws but important tools for the welfare of society. The
draft power or milk of the animal was too valuable to waste. And wasting
pasture to feed many cows for slaughter would eventually have brought
starvation.

Then why has cow slaughter become so prominent over the last few
centuries? Let's begin in Europe in the late Middle Ages. That's when
the draft horse began to push the ox out of agriculture. Even though
horses needed costly grain, they could plow much faster than oxen. "They
were able to increase greatly the amount of food that one farmer could
raise, which meant that more men were freed to pursue the arts and
crafts," observed agricultural historians Vernon Carter and Tom Dale. So
people started shifting to the towns, and oxen started heading for
slaughter.

In the 1700's, the industrial revolution speeded up cow slaughter. New
farming machines and new crops such as clover and turnips made cows
easier to raise for meat. And technological advances increased the
output and efficiency of slaughterhouses. So producers could supply meat
more cheaply.

Factory life forced people to change what they ate. Unlike the farmer,
the factory worker couldn't go home to a lunch of lentil stew or
porridge. Bread and meat were more convenient. So the factory worker's
food preference changed to meat, and because his income was increasing,
he could afford it.

In __The Industrial Revolution__, Frederick Dietz writes, "Since meat
was coming to be more valuable than powers of draft in an ox,"
traditional breeds that provided milk and draft power tended to be
"replaced by such new breeds of cattle as the Durham shorthorns, the
Herefords, and the Devons." So the industrial revolution bred beef
cattle.

But it was across the ocean in the newly developing American nation that
raising cows for meat would become a big way to gain wealth. This is
somewhat ironic because in America until about 1840, when draft horses
became more widespread, oxen were the main source of agricultural
traction. A team of oxen could be bought for one sixth the price of a
team of horses, oxen could do the same work for less expense in feed,
and oxen were resistant to disease. Ben Franklin noted, "The farmers
are more thriving in those parts of the country where cattle are used
than in those where the labor is done by horses. The latter are said to
require twice the quantity of food to maintain them."

Yet two factors made it possible and even profitable to raise cattle for
slaughter. The first was the Native American crop maize --or corn--
which gave much higher yields than European grains. The second was that
by taking land from the Native Americans, European immigrants could
create much larger farms than in Europe.

Since the Native Americans had never farmed with draft animals, most of
their land had never been used for anything more than hunting and
gathering. The new American farmers were able to take hold of large
plots of this fertile land, so with oxen the farmers could reap tons of
grain more than they needed for their own subsistence.

The farmers, of course, wanted to make money from the grain, but
shipping it to market was difficult. Roads were poor, and carts were
scarce, especially during the American Revolutionary War, when they were
absorbed by the military. Smithsonian agricultural historian John
Schlebecker relates the farmers' unenlightened solution: "Corn-fed
cattle and hogs which transported themselves provided one important way
of moving the corn crop to market. The grain otherwise had to be
transported by cart and wagon."

North American farmers also developed vital economic relations with the
slave-powered sugar plantations of the West Indies. European plantation
owners preferred to plant all their West Indian acreage in sugar, sell
it at high prices, and import whatever else they needed for food. "Corn,
wheat, flour and bread from North America always found a ready market in
the West Indies. The West Indians also bought large quantities of dried
and salted meats." Thus krsi-go-hatya, farming and cow killing, began to
assume an important place in American economic development.

Neglecting to follow Krsna's instructions to base the economy on
agriculture, cow protection, and trade has led to disastrous results.
The role of the ox in Krsna's system is crucial. The ox's limited
productivity works against the growth of a centralized, impersonal,
exploitive economy and keeps society based in the country, where the
simple life favors spiritual advancement. The more society strays from
Krsna's plan, the more suffering increases. In my next column, i'll
discuss how the mechanization of agriculture multiplied the misery.

END OF PART I

Submitted by Kalki Dasa for Back to Godhead
Used by permission


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