$JES 921 Book of Compassion Reverence For All Life Reference Book

Author(s): Pramoda Chitrabhanu, Pravin K Shah
Publisher: JAINA Education Committee

Page 23

2. - DAIRY COWS - LIFE USAGE SUFFERINGS
Slaughterhouse Products: A parallel process operates in the "fabrication areas where workers carve away the edible meats the round, the top round, the loin, strip steaks, rib, chuck. Like car parts, each piece of the animal has its own price and market. Cow lips, which sell for 58 cents a pound, for the most part is shipped to Mexico, where they are shredded, spiced, grilled and used for taco filling. Many cow hearts (27 cents a pound) are exported to Russia to make sausage. Much of the meat from the cow's cheek (55 cents a pound) is sold to American meat processors for sausage and bologna. Of course, many of these "variety meats" are sold to pet food companies, which prefer to buy the separated parts. "Just as a chef uses precise proportions to make a fine meal, the pet food people follow recipes calling for different quantities of hearts, livers and so forth to get the right taste and nutritional content," says Mark Klein, a spokesman for Cargill, the Minneapolis based meat packing company. Until the rise of biotechnology which allows drug companies to "ferment" medications in the laboratory using recombinant DNA many pharmaceuticals were extracted from animals. Nevertheless, fetal blood from cows (roughly $40 to $50 a quart) remains an important tool for the development of drugs and medical research.
Other medications and markets are made by extracting hormones and other compounds from the cow's glands. The pituitary glands ($19.50 a pound) are collected to make medicines that control blood pressure and heart rate. Twenty different steroids are made from fluids pulled from the adrenal glands ($2.85 a pound). The lungs (6 cents a pound) go into Heparin, an anti-coagulant. And the pancreas (63 cents a pound) is still a source of insulin for diabetics allergic to the synthetic kind; it takes about 26 cows to maintain one diabetic for a year. The highest price is fetched by the most dubious product - cattle gallstones, which are sold for $600 an ounce to merchants in the Far East who peddle them as an aphrodisiac.
It is no small paradox that much of the excess gristle and fat is sold to companies that promise to make people beautiful. Lipstick, makeup bases, eyeliners, eyebrow pencils, hair rinses and bubble
THE BOOK OF COMPASSION
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