Skip to main content

Indian Bovines

I have no comment or input of value on the scientific accuracy of the article but am definitely impressed that the 283 million burping and belching cows of India have merited an article in Time magazine. So what if they did not make the cover page, though one hopes that would be the logical next step for our nation's ubiquitous bovine - the strength in numbers cannot be underestimated.

Now that these hapless creatures have been identified as a big contributor to the global warming problem, you wonder what lifestyle adjustments might be required of them to minimize their deleterious effects on the environment - if it may be mandated they ingest chemicals that would turn the methane they are currently emitting into something less noxious. Obviously dealing with a bunch of cows is a lot easier than getting millions of human beings to reduce their carbon footprints.

I can't imagine any of this is good news for the Indian cows or for the consumers of their milk the yield of which is enhanced by putting the cows on a diet "urea-molasses-mineral blocks". That sure does not conjure up the image of a cud-chewing ruminant, grazing peacefully on rolling acres of green - though the purveyors of dairy products would love for us to buy into just that imagery.
Labels:

Comments

ggop said…
Agreed HC. Here we read tomes by Michael Pollan and articles with Alice Waters and then drink organic milk sans antibiotics while poor Indian cows are being offered a slow release antibiotic to reduce gas. What next - rGBH? Then we will see reduction in the median age of young girls attaining puberty? Just like the US?
Double standards what?

To all beef eaters of the world I want to remind them that a kg of beef needs 15,000 litres of water as compared to a kg of vegetables which needs 2000 litres.
4:43 PM
Heartcrossings said…
ggop - It seems like the developed world wants to have its cake and eat it to. I was listening to this story on NPR about how the green revolution is driving the farmers there out of work and depleting the soil to the point that nothing will grow anymore. So much for doing things the right way a la the West....
7:25 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more