Daily Musings...

 

Daily notes on things I see, read or reflect on... ongoing understandings

Avoid the bandwagons

I recently came across some information which indicated that modern poultry farming techniques, which ensured high quality egg production, rearing of hens so that they produce more eggs, all this was supported and encouraged in India by the Peace Corps, an American social service organization which combined bringing Christian values and modern development to the 'less fortunate' world. It also believed it was fighting world hunger by improving the amount and quality of protein nutrition in developing countries.

Following these interventions the modern poultry farms grew in India and slowly become more mechanized, organized and high producing, so that by today only 20% of India's eggs are produced on local farms, and the rest 80% on factory farms. Indian governments too, encouraged by the global wisdom about protein and health, advertised to their populations that eating an egg a day will keep them healthy. The acceptance was so effective that even a number Hindu vegetarian families would feel their young children eggs, as it was deemed necessary for growth.

Surely the peace corps are not entirely responsible for introducing the modern poultry industry in India but they were surely significant. Their strongest presence was in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh I think , states that to this day are high egg producers. Today India is the third largest egg producer in the world, after China and America (i gather, from a video on veganism). 

Today, again from the West a new wave has come to India. Animal Rights groups, both Indian and Western, show us the terrible conditions of egg-farms. Terrible they surely are. They are now educating us of other vegan sources of protein. They are telling us that modern animal factory farming, create large amounts of green house gases and obviously are cruel to animals. They also tell us how especially the large scale farming of cattle, requires much production of fodder for them to eat, which uses land, which eventually exacerbated world hunger. So we are being urged to go vegan, to use other sources of protein, to contribute in solving world hunger and reducing climate change, poultry farms are being urged to stop using battery-cages to keep hens. 

I do not mean to say that vegan advocacy is wrong. Or simply that it is just a western ploy to fool us. Much of what vegans say does seem to make sense. in particular their description of the suffering of animals in egg and milk industries makes a strong impression on me. 

Yet, I find it disconcerting that entire countries and populations are routinely taken on one ride and then another ride, driven by mandates that some people have decided are wise. India of course used and abused animals in its own way, as did other cultures. Yet most of the time keeping a few cows in one's house or a few chickens or pigs or goats, was always way less cruel than what modern factory farms are doing today. We went through such a large shift, only to now stop and decide to change our ways. 

The lesson for me really is, live simply and non-violently, and avoid jumping on bandwagons of any kind!

Encounters between Scandinavian Missionaries and Santhali tribes in 1867-1900

While on academia.com, I came across a book review about a book on missionaries from Norway who worked among Santhali communities during the time of the British rule. This note is not related to the genuine and controversial debates about conversion activities among tribal groups. It makes some other observations. 

The book (of which the review was) had noted that the attitude of these missionaries to the tribal person was different from the usual style displayed by missionarie from lets say UK or Germany. Norway, their country of origin and also the Santhal land had both been exposed to modern technology and to trains at around the same time. A sense of Santhali identity and nationhood was growing among the tribal people and it was similarly found in Norway. Norway had till very recently had strong pagan traditions of Viking Gods and their memories were still strong even among the Christian missionaries. For example, they found similarities between the chief Santal boga (spirit) Maran Buru with the Scandinavian shape-shifting God, Loki (we all know that God, don't we!). 

Pagan faiths in both Norway and Santhal culture

So, the book had observed - that the missionaries who had themselves left these pagan faiths and been attracted to Christianity did not see Indian lives as 'civilized Europeans making sense of savage people', as was common perhaps among missionaries from some other countries. Instead, they were 'confronted with their own sinful past'. Possibly Irish missionaries would also have been different, as their local histories had also gone through processes of suppression by mainstream Britain. 

The colonizing West had its own suppressed histories

I found this example so fascinating because you can see the tragedy of it so starkly. That even the West had a non-Christian past, which it came to reject. Of course some years later, these old histories began to to revived and they never really left, as we see with the fascination for the history of Scotland and Ireland. Yet the British were going all over the world trying to reform other people. Also, it is an interesting instance to the see the variations within Europe and how all colonizer-colonized encounters in India were not the same. 

(These ideas are cited from a book review of 'An encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries and their changing worlds 1867-1900, by Marine Carrin and Harald Tambs-Lyche, in 2008)

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Veganism isn't about eating natural 

These days we read and hear about various new approaches to diet. There is the organic movement, a growing preference towards eating traditional and indigenous diets, and growing without pesticides and fertilizers, there is the Keto diet which is about having more protein and fat and less carbs to reduce weight. There is veganism that encourages people to give up eating meat as well as dairy products. 

Veganism's main concern is to stop cruelty to animals

One cannot be blamed for assuming that veganism's push towards eating a 'plant-based diet' must be all about eating natural. However that is hardly the interest of Veganism. In fact it can be quite comfortable not eating natural as well. Their main goals are two - that we avoid any form of cruelty to animals and that we eat and consume in a manner that reduces the rapid effects of climate change. Data has shown over the years that both the large scale meat and dairy industries operate in a manner that generates huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. A significant percentage of farmed land includes that which produces animal feed to cater to these animals - cattle and poultry mostly. Also vast amounts of water is consumed.  It is believed that the reducing the scale of this industry will have direct benefits for climate change and resources conservation. 

Even more urgently vegan activists would like to tell us all that animals undergo immense violence and very reduced and poor lifetimes within factory farms. These farms are nothing compared to a romantic vision we have of farming and animal care during the medieval age. The forces of mass production are such. To make milk and meat freely and continuously available for a large consumption market - not only individual households but restaurants and fast food chains - the mistreatment of animals is unavoidable. These animals are routinely separated from their mothers, denied their milk. Male calves and chicks little use except as meat. The conditions even of those who live, are quite horrible. The lifespans of cows that have to be made pregnant repeatedly reduces by almost 1/3rd. 

If meat is grown in a lab, its ok

So these are really the concerns of veganism. In an environment where many people are realizing that plant-based diets, at least predominantly plant-based diets are healthier options in the sedentary lives of al least privileged classes, veganism also chooses to speak for vegetarian diets. However this goal is what we discussed above. Vegan experts tell us that a plant and nut based diet is actually sufficient source for protein and calcium. If at all we have deficiencies of vitamin D or B12, the two things that dairy and meat alone are believed to provide, these they say can be had in the form of supplements. There is a growing vegan business worldwide of producing either clean meat - which is basically meat cultured and grow in a lab, or plant-based meat, foods made from plant-based protein sources. Various small additives from various plants are added to it, in order to create items that look, smell and even taste like meat, but are sourced from plants. 

A blurring of boundary between natural and synthetic

In a world today when both a human muscle and a chicken muscle can be cultured and grown in a laboratory we can see that the category of natural itself is not what it used to be. Additionally today nutritional and biochemical sciences have broken down nutritional components and flavour and taste elements into much more fundamental parts. so plant-based meat uses small and selective extracts from yeast, olive oil, coconut, beetroot, various concentrates, mineral and vitamin compounds and what not to bring together that meat-like experience in a food that has not animal meat in it. 

So natural food too can potentially be perceived as a sum of its many chemical and biochemical parts, in a way that blurs distinctions between chemical, synthetic, natural and artificial. It was perhaps to be expected. Whether it is the process of replacing fertilisers and chemicals with natural alternatives or attempts to integrate traditional medicine into modern biomedicine, we find similar shifts. The natural is studied with greater and greater scrutiny, at molecular, chemical and microscopic levels in order to increase its efficient understanding and use. 

If one speculates, in a certain extreme case Veganism would even be ok with growing vegetables indoors in nutrient rich water - another new and growing field in agricultural 'sciences'. So if some years hence, we feel that Earth has had it, lets go and colonise Mars, then could we even go and colonize this new planet and grow vegetables in such water and live non-cruelly? Maybe i'm taking it too far. After all the need to save animals and the climate is for the purpose of our lives, here and now. Yet, it is worthy observation because today with new simultaneous explorations in various sciences, veganism could as easily map on to synthetic mass food production as it could we moving towards healthier and natural diets. Vegans for instance would not necessarily be against GM foods and seeds. 

Sustainable Agriculture and livelihoods

Veganism of course has many faces and levels. Those who are most passionate about animal rights alone, are at one end. There are other who may prefer to reduce factory level meat consumption and are  also interested in healthy diets. Many environmentalist in India have somewhat divergent interests. They are more focused on sustainable agriculture - for instance the use of local and hardy seed varieties that need less water and also free farmers from dependence and debt under the forces of multinational seed companies. This is a very different kind of focus. Here again the main concern may not be about eating natural, unprocessed foods, but at the core lies the idea of economic self-sufficiency and ecological security. 

So where is Health actually?

Health in all this seems to occupy an interesting space of convergence. 

spiritual too. 

A world without domestic animals?