Mob lynching of Muslims in India for alleged transport of cattle needs to be condemned. But is the current level of meat consumption becoming a bigger problem for humanity?
Many Muslims have died at the hands of the Gau Rakshas (cow protectors) who draw inspiration from the Hinduvta movement which falsely claims that the slaughter of cows and eating of beef was introduced to India by Muslims.
The evidence adduced by many scholars, including Professor Wendy Doniger in her book, The Hindus, An Alternative History, shows that cow meat was consumed in the time of the oldest Hindu sacred text, the Rig Veda around 1500 BC, bullocks and castrated steers were eaten ordinarily but cows were feasted upon at rituals or on welcoming a guest or a person of high social standing.
Later, the ancient ritual text Brahamanas around 900 BC and other texts that taught religious duty (dharma) from 3 BC say that a bull or a cow should be killed to be eaten when a guest arrives.
In the Mahabharata epic composed between 300 BC and 300 AD, the cow’s life was spared after it promised to avail her milk to people. Cows thus came to be visualised as a paradigmatic animal that yields food without being killed. Eating cows became a taboo but beef from the male bovine species continued to be eaten particularly by the lower castes and Dalits.
Hindus do not worship cows as a god but revere them for their docility and generosity. Of the five things it produces – milk, butter, yoghurt, urine and dung – the first three can be eaten or used in worship of gods whereas the last two can be used for religious devotion or for burning as a fuel.
Once a Hindu priest was asked, what he would rather gawk at. The backside of the cow or the face of a cat? He responded quite predictably, ‘the behind of the cow, of course. In it is visible the necessities of life whereas the cat face at best can give you only a dead mouse!
Regrettably, the innocent and docile cow has become a lightning rod for violence with impunity in the name of religion.
When the slaughter of cows is considered in a wider context of animal welfare and environmental sustainability it becomes clear that the issue of meat consumption deserves action by all mankind.
The slaughter of animals is a violent episode and to the extent that humans can adopt non-meat diet we can avoid harming a living creature. Even when the slaughtering knives are very sharp the animal suffers excessive trauma when being restrained and prepared for slaughtering.
Adopting non-meat food substitutes is good for the environment and arguably for human health. Consumption of 1 kilo of beef produces 27 kilos of greenhouse gas emissions as compared to just 2 kilos of greenhouse gases for vegetables.
To put this into another perspective, human settlements occupy only 1% of the planet’s landmass, while livestock grazing and feed production use 27%. Compare this to 7% used for crop production for direct human consumption, and 26% occupied by forests. Assuming other things remain equal, changing to a vegetarian diet would slow global warming.
If veg does not suit your palate, scientific advances will ensure that lab-grown meat is there, provided you are willing to stomach it.
A cow’s stem cells, the building blocks of muscle and other organs, when placed in petri dishes with amino acids and carbohydrates enable the muscle cells to multiply and grow. Lab-grown meat has a much lower carbon footprint than the prevailing method of producing meat and may be cheaper as well.
The uptake of cultured meat by Muslims will depend on its relative price, accessibility and whether it is halal. Some halal certification authorities believe that stem cells from halal-slaughtered animals will make lab meat halal.
But not so, if biopsies from living animals are performed to extract stem cells. However, stems cells from feathers and wool of living animals are considered permissible.
Animal welfare and environmental issues are driving technological changes in the production of meat, which will bring into sharper focus how Muslims and indeed the rest of humanity source and consume their sustenance in future.
Can you imagine what Eid ul-Adha would look like when lab meat becomes ubiquitous?
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