UDDER-ly hopeful

A nice break in the weather affords a most auspicious opportunity to bathe the cows. Three months of severe winter has resulted in three months of accumulated dung cake on the thighs of Mother Tulasi. I properly applied full hose pressure and nothing happened. What now? One hour later, arms sore from brushing out layer by layer, Tulasi is far from clean but tomorrow is another day.

Working in the barn has been such a pleasure for me. Yesterday, I took in a good hour nap, literally, on top of our baby bull Madhava. Every once in awhile, DROP! Madhava's head would slip off my knee and briefly startle his slumber. Might this be the perfection of life?

Over the last month I've been fortunate to have had the opportunity to give several short workshops to visiting college students on cow protection and environmental sustainability. Last week was a group of 60 or so good-lookin' folks from Ohio. Two months of cow seva with supplemental research is solidifying in my heart the absolute importance to campaign for cow protection throughout the world. As a fading political activist for indigenous people's rights and environmental justice, I never fully realized how the livestock industry, and its eternal meat-eating consumer consorts, are the original source of these injustices. Agricultural peoples destroyed by meat-eating peoples, generating byproducts (children), desperately needing more land to raise more grain for feed, more animals for slaughter, more houses for their meat-eating children, etc. The magnitude of the livestock industry continues to annihilate the world's rainforest reserves, contaminate the fresh water supply, deplete the ozone layer, devour natural habitat, displace peoples and destroy native cultures. The torchlight of knowledge has made this so clear, so obvious. My former ignorance disgusts me.

Onward, as I was preparing for the most recent workshop, I came across a fascinating statement stating that the first principle of cow protection is ox employment, with milk coming secondary as a byproduct. Cows need to give birth in order to lactate. Male calves suffer the impending doom of the slaughter house. Do organic standards take this in account? No. Organic has gone corporate and is far from cruelty-free or ethical. A quick Internet search will reinforce in pictures the malpractice of so-called organic dairy companies such as Horizon. The way I see it, even if a family or community is milking their own cows, unless the oxen can be properly trained and utilized, it is more conscious to be vegan than support this monstrous cycle of the dairy/beef industry, the former feeding the later and vice versa (evident if you've read a newspaper in the last two years or even the bulletin board in the prasad hall).

As I care for these calves, I wonder what their fate will be. I close my eyes and I see a zoomed in version of calf mouth liking my face. Who will engage them in Krishna's service? Who will take on this great responsibility?