The well-known name that has always managed to get us into nostalgic memories through its lucrative and catchy advertisement, the song is still fresh in many of our minds “doodh ka sagar behta jaye, kangan sone ke khankaye, Mharo ghar angan lchmi ke baje”. While it started back in 1946 a year before we got independence, the story of Amul is well known and it is something we wouldn’t discuss here. Now let us have a peek into the history of other contender I e., PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) which I fearlessly call the hypocritic organisation which only cares to take up the issues which favour them, they don’t have a neutral stance towards issue that they raise. PETA is a non-profit corporation claims 6.5 million supporters. Its slogan is "Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way. That’s a very good thing when we read about it, a bunch of peoples in 1980 starting an organisation on their mission to give voice to the voiceless animals and stop people from experimenting, killing, eating and wearing any animal produces. Which is supported by any logical person, if you need to eat them please do but just make sure that they are kept in humane conditions (read previous article on this here)
Why in news and controversy?
While there is absolutely no doubt that they have done a commendable job in uncovering the brutal truth of atrocities done on animals in meat industries and other facilities, taking up a full time job and making documentaries, collecting facts and figures against these companies and fighting a legal battle against them in the end, it requires huge amount of motivation and passion, in India we have always respected the passion and bowed down to the perseverance of an individual or any organization so to speak who are passionate about their work, but there is a nuance to this subject in particular.
Recently, PETA India had tweeted urging Amul to go vegan and stop milking cattle. Now on the face of it, the tweet may look harmless and a simple suggestion to Amul to change its business model and benefit the farming society, because by switching to veganism there will be more crops grown, farmers will have good yield and Amul will give more employment to people, indirectly.
But let us have a balanced approach to this, let’s not just jump and take sides. While Amul’s vice-chairman Valamji Humbal has urged PM Modi to ban the NGO PETA.
Amul told PM Modi: "... The GDP can be affected adversely by misinformation spread by opportunistic elements like this NGO (PETA). Organisations like this are part of the conspiracy to render unemployed the milk producers of India.” (Source: Money controls)
While the concern of Mr Vilamji is legitimate and this is not the first time something like this has happened in India, readers might remember how foreign companies tried and destroyed the famous Company Dhara which was also based on a similar business model as Amul (readers can read the article here). Dhara was an excellent business model which was destroyed in less than a year by misinformation and malignant campaigns inspired to destroy the company to introduce refined oil in India (Dhara was an oil company which gave pure oils) Amul could end up the safe fate if this misinformation is propagated by PETA for a very long time hence ending employment of a large section of farmers in India. Also, not to forget that the White revolution will go in vain if this happens. We literally abandoned our A2 milking cows in the name of white revolution and now all we are left with is A1 cow.
Let’s have a detailed look at the aftermath if Amul accepts the offer of going vegan
Unemployed and poverty.
If Wikipedia is to be believed the company directly gives employment to 3.6 million milk producing members, now these members consist of farmers, dairy members, small farm holder, people who do not own any land and just have these cattle in the name of property and the only source of their income is the milk they get from these cattle. They do not have any land, the loans they take from the rural banks are taken by keeping these cattle as collateral, these cattle are also insured. It is in the culture of this land that anything and everything that is an essential source of your income then it is considered as equivalent to God hence every animal is worshipped. Even if they are not worshipped (if some people are to be believed) these are the only means of livelihood these people have, do we want to create a situation where these people are left to die?.
Raising prices, costly goods
For the sake of arguments if we accept hypothetically that the soy, almond or plant-based milk is far better for people and contains many nutrients let is analyse the investment to return ratio in terms of business profitability. Since plant-based milk is hard to obtain, I e, you first need to grow the plant and then install machinery to extract and make milk out of it, and for a regular supply of milk we need a huge stock of regular seed supply, to meet the demand of a huge population of 135 crore people. Even if we come up with a solution to tackle this problem the issue doesn’t end here, both soy and almonds are Rabi crops. The yield would be very low in kharif season, what are the proposed alternative? there are a few alternatives to soy and almond whose milk is possible viz sunflower, pumpkin, which grow in Rabi season, pumpkin, cashew which grow in kharif season and groundnut (peanut), pumpkin, sesame which grow in both the seasons.
A farmer of India is not very much capable to grow every crop to have a steady income all over the year, in a country where we already need the same crops to fulfill our daily oil needs, we are planning to grow them in mass scale just to make plant-based milk? How viable/smart or preposterous is that?
The costing
The biggest hurdle is the cost of this milk, the cost of machinery installation and process of making milk out of a seed is not same among all the seeds. the properties of these seeds change and hence the process of extraction of milk does too, while people may argue that with large scale production and growth, which is not possible, but if considered just for the sake of argument and assumed hypothetically, even in that case it is not possible to make this fancy milk affordable to common man, they are not pocket friendly.
Soy milk ranges anywhere between ₹ 120 – 200 while almond milk is somewhere near ₹ 200-300, is a common house hold person ready to pay that amount? Even if hypothetically, we manage to bring this cost down to ₹ 40-50 then the previous problems come into picture.
The evolution
It took thousands of years for the human to body to get accustomed to the cattle milk which is an easy and excellent source of protein for all age group people. A vital source of daily body needs, if a large number of people suddenly change to this there are chances that many people who may have suppressed allergic reactions to certain seeds may get ill at the same time, and a few may develop new complications due to reasons which may not clearly be known to us.
While, these are a few reasons not to switch to plant-based milk there are many such small/large scale issues. Also, not to forget that if this happens people will at large abandon the cattle animals and that will create a bigger crisis like destroying the crops due to hunger, stray cattle which may create hurdle in transportation, and since smuggling and killing milking cattle is an offense they called be culled, the whole purpose of PETA will then be defeated on a much larger scale, and the list of problem goes on and on.
While the initiative of PETA is utterly preposterous and condemnable it is important to understand that even making such statement decreases the credibility of such “NGO”.
PETA has been vehemently arguing to go vegan and opt plant-based diet and ditch meat altogether, while the idea of being a vegan can be very fascinating in the west world its irrelevant in India where cattle are treated as a part of family they are loved and worshipped across the Indian subcontinent. So, if PETA doesn’t understand the Indian culture, it is better that they learn about it first and then make a polite and good suggestion/ comment on it, just blabbering mumbo-jumbo would seriously get its already low credibility further down.
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| source: BBC news |
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| not just cows all animals are worshipped (source walkthroughindia.com) |
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