Hare Krishna

Hanumatpresaka Swami,

please accept my humble obeisances, all glories to Prabhupada!

I have a big dilemma. One of the 4 regulative principles is ahimsa, not eating meat, not hurting others (or the least possible), that's how I understand it. If to obtain industrial milk, the cows are exploited, raped and separated from their babies, who are subsequently deprived of their milk and sent to the slaughterhouse in the case of males, all this process is very painful.

I understand that killing cows is not ahimsa.

In addition there is no dairy industry as such, since beef comes from the same industry from which the milk comes. If we buy industrial dairy, we are paying to kill and injure cows. Their udders are wounded and infected, which is very very painful, their minds are disturbed, they are given antidepressants to overcome the traumas of being separated from their babies again and again year after year, in addition to physical exploitation. These cows live about 6 - 7 years, when they could live 20. It is also violence against the calves, since they separate them from their mothers as soon as they are born and do not allow them to suckle from their udders, and then kill them.

They suffer a lot of terror and pain. This should not be justified with what is for Krishna or what is Kali yuga. Rather, I think these are excuses for satisfying the tongue, which is no different from eating meat (because you are mistreating cows as in a concentration camp to get that milk).

That is to say, for me to offer sweets, guewes, dairy products to Krishna, I have to collaborate with the physical and psychological mistreatment of hundreds of cows and also collaborate with the killing of calves and cows. It seems to me a barbarity to justify violence by saying that it is in the name of God.

I am very confused and I do not understand why this is normal and the devotees accept it, could you please advise me on this. What do you think? Thank you very much, your servant Arina.

HpS - AGTSP. Paoho. We answered this in a previous Blog post. Do you read the posts? We don't do too many while we are traveling. Now with the current arrangement for the Blog (PND is improving it!) we can't search for the post very easy.

Trying to accomplish several things at the same time we updated our "asa-encyclopedia.docx" file in the Archives in our webpage, www.jayarama.us with an entry on our understanding of Vegan diet.

There a lot more things that could be said, but we would like to hear your ideas on this first.

Thank you,

Hare Krsna!