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Vermont (USA) and saw with our own eyes the cruelty and suffering that we been reading so often. This is true.
To review, the meat and milk industries are inextricably linked; they are two sides of the same violent coin. The cost of beef is subsidized by the sale of milk and leather. All livestock in a dairy farm are predestined for the slaughterhouse: newborn male calves for veal within six months of birth and the remaining female cows when, by the age of five years, milk production starts to decrease. The natural life span of a cow is more than twenty years.
Dairy cows are often fed ground up fish and bone, routinely injected with hormones, repeatedly impregnated for continuous milk production and separated from their calves very shortly after birth. There can be no doubt that the production of dairy, however "humane" we may try to make it, will always involve violence to five-sensed creatures (Panchandriyas). Moreover, milk production is a tremendous burden on the environment; it takes a great deal of grain, water and energy to produce dairy products, and there are many harmful consequences of waste and pollution that result.
Some Jains point to scriptures that indicate that Tirthankaras consumed some milk products. It must be remembered, however, at that time there was no intensive or "factory" farming. Moreover, at that time, there were no mass distribution systems or storage systems for grains and other agricultural products. So taking small amounts of locally produced fresh dairy products may have represented the minimum amount of himsa necessary given conditions then. Cows were treated as revered members of the family and oxen were used in farming. The animals were not killed even when they stopped producing milk or stopped working in the fields. We cannot be certain of all the conditions of those days but we know for sure that things are very different now.
According to Jain theory, milk and milk products are considered Vigayee or Maha-Vigavee and are prohibited during Ayambil.
An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
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