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CATTLE-PRESERVATION:
'MUST' FOR INDIA'S AGRICULTURE
*A note presented by
Shree K.
C. Shroff chairmen of Excel Industries for the consideration of the
national-seminar
continued....from Page 6
The Issue of Nutrition
The
opposition to the ban on cow slaughter on the alleged ground
that beef is the cheapest source of nutrition is also
indefensible. Firstly, even if beef was really cheap, it does
not follow that we are free to butcher the cow. The cheapness
of the commodity is not an absolute merit or quality; the
conditions behind its being cheap must be taken into account.
To buy cheap and to sell dear are to be the best bargain
hunter are the tenets of unethical or sinful economics. The
things may be cheaper because someone is paying for it with
his labour, or his spirit or his peace or his life. We simply
cannot afford to forget the important lesson on this subject
given to us by John Ruskin in his book, Unto This Last. The
cheap things may have a morally negative sign. The bricks may
be cheap after the earthquake and coal may be cheap after the
fire. The things with child labour may be cheap. In case of
beef, if it is cheap, the cow is paying for it with her life.
But is beef really the
cheapest source of nutrition? While determining the policy of
supplying food and nutrition, we must first think about 50 to
60 percent of the population below the poverty line, and also
the low income people. The provision of food security to these
vast numbers of people has to be the topmost priority of any
economic policy. Can the beef economy ever achieve this
objective? The answer is clearly no.
Further, the cheapness of
beef is not to be decided by comparing beef prices with the
prices of other meat products such as mutton or fish or
chicken. Is it a cheap source of nutrition when com- pared
with the local food grains, pulses, vegetables, etc. ? No, it
is not. Moreover, beef as well as other meat products would be
found to be very costly when the subsidies and the
environmental costs are taken into account. It has been shown
that for producing one kilo of beef, we have to use 4.8 kilos
of grain input. The conversion ratios for chicken, pork, etc.
are similarly high.
In short, the argument that
beef is the cheapest source of nutrition is born of myopic and
blinkered perspective and causal empiricism. Taking into
account all the aspects, the conclusion reached by the World
Watch Institute on this subject is worthy of serious note. It
says, "the abundance in the world's butcher shops has its
cost -many of which are currently billed to the Earth. Meat
-fed world is now an unrealizable dream. Of necessity, a
sustainable livestock system will have to rest on
reintegrating livestock with crops. Live stocks have been boons
to the humans for millennia and with enough pressure for
reforms, animal agriculture's current transgression will end.
Personal habits as well as national policies will change when
enough people say enough".
Lesson
From Experience
The consistency demands that the National policy of
banning the cow slaughter is immediately and effectively
implemented. Let us remember what happened to exports of
frog-legs. The greed for foreign exchange had prompted many,
who are always in search of opportunities to make quick money
by hook or crook, to export frog-legs on a large scale. >>>
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