“Hearing the term ‘Cow Protection,’ people typically react in two ways. Some think protection is for endangered species, and since there are billions of cows, it's better to concentrate on whales or the African elephant. Others think it may be some pagan worship of animals - the ‘sacred cow’ image. 

The actual philosophical reason for cow protection is very simple; all living entities deserve protection from slaughter and other violence at the hands of humans. Not only cows, all animals have souls the same as we do. They are all children of Krsna, all dear to Him.

The cow, however, is our MOTHER. Vedic philosophy teaches there are seven mothers: 1) the birth mother, 2) the nurse, 3) the wife of the father (if she is not the birth mother), 4) the wife of the king, 5) the wife of the spiritual master, 6) the earth, and 7) the cow. You may wonder why the cow is one of the seven mothers. It is because she gives her milk to nourish us.

All mothers should hold a position of respect, and since one does not kill and eat one's mother, the cow should not be killed and eaten. Likewise, the bull is our father because he can plow the earth to produce food grains. One does not kill and eat one's father and mother - not even when they are old and less economically useful.

In practice the first principle of cow protection, surprisingly, is OX EMPLOYMENT.

There is a mistake made when only the cow is considered, because typically, her main usefulness is seen as milk production, and she will not give milk unless she first has a calf. Half of all calves are bulls who will never produce milk. The expense of feeding the bulls will be a deficit to the farmer unless he realizes their potential for alternative energy by employing them in tilling the fields and hauling.  Otherwise, the farmer, in most countries throughout the world, acquires his economic profit by selling them for meat either directly to the slaughterhouse, the meat industry’s feedlots, or to the veal industry where he lives a short life crammed into a small crate not much bigger than him. 

The cow is also sold for meat when she cannot produce the required quantity of milk. Regardless of milk production, the dung and urine of a cow or bull is valuable. Instead of slaughtering all bovines who do not produce milk, why not utilize their dung and urine in fertilizers, compost, pest repellent, medicines, cleaning products, pancagavya, and biogas fuel to name a few useful and saleable items?

 “Now, practically, in India they accept it, and it has been found by chemical examination that the cow dung contains all antiseptic properties. That is a fact. One Dr. Goshal, he analyzed in his laboratory, “Why this Vedic injunction is the stool of cow or cow dung is pure?” So he analyzed, and he found it that the stool of cow, cow dung, is full of antiseptic properties.”-Lectures Srimad-Bhägavatam 7.9.10 July 9, 1968 Montreal

The modern system of agriculture does not realize the alternative energy potential of the bull calf nor the variety of useful bovine dung and urine products. Therefore, slaughtering becomes the only economically viable means of management.  Most people, accustomed to this viewpoint and seeing no alternative, will throw up their hands and agree, even if they prefer a less violent solution. This is only because they don't have the facts. They don't know that the overall value of the ox is greater when he is utilized for work than when he's slaughtered for meat, and even when not productive a cow or ox produces useful urine and dung.

The present system is full of ironies and very wasteful. Everyone laments the loss of the small family farm. But economic forces today require quantity control - which is dependent on expensive tractors, polluting fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, and heavy mortgages - and the small farmer is driven out of business.

THE OX IS THE BACKBONE OF THE FARM,

NOT THE SOUP BONE.

* worldwatch.org, madcowboy.com,