THAT'S IT - NO MORE BEEF MORE ME!

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THAT'S IT - NO MORE BEEF MORE ME!

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=49491

 

"Once I asked the Indian sage Vimala Thakar about eating meat. She

said simply that if one lived in a place where meat was the only

available thing to eat, then of course one would have to eat it. But

if other food was available and it was possible to live without

killing, then that was preferable. To live without killing was

preferable.... Hindus don't eat beef, in particular, because they

view the cow as a symbol of the bounty and grace of God. The cow

gives us milk freely for the asking, always giving, and from the

milk come butter and cheese. And when the cow dies of old age it

gives again, giving us leather, and horns for carving. So they

worship the "sacred" cow and consider eating it an insult to God.

Adopting their view of the cow might also help us in giving up our

beef habit. The Hindu attitude toward the cow is a gentle and loving

and respectful one."

 

Posted By: billym <Send E-Mail>

Thursday, 27 May 2004, 3:29 a.m.

 

Time To Stop Eating Beef

My Reaction to the Mad Cow Killer's Letter

<A HREF="http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/members/forum.cgi?

noframes;read=49481"> The Mad Cow Killer's Letter </A>

This is a powerful letter the Mad Cow Killer has written. And I love

the way he starts it out: "Dave Louthan here. I'm the guy that

killed that mad cow." Reading this letter of Dave's I felt a

decision happening somewhere inside: no more beef for me. It's a no-

brainer really, but it sure took me long enough to get here.

 

Trouble is, I love a good steak. Most of us who were raised on a

meat diet do. And nothing dies harder than the habit of the diet you

were raised on. It just goes very deep, all the way back to baby

days. Worse yet, the last steak I had was the best steak I ever had.

I and my elder brother were visiting mom and dad and my dad wanted

to celebrate the visit so he went to some special store and bought

the World's Most Expensive Meat - some exotic cut I never knew about

at over $12.00/pound. Boy, was that juicy and tasty, thick, tender,

melt in your mouth and....hold on, wait a minute, I thought I was

writing about giving up beef. Let me get reoriented.

 

Yes, the disease, the prion disease. For those who didn't read the

above post let me quote an important part of it.

 

 

"If you have had a hamburger in the last year you have probably got

a belly full of prions. These prions are small and tough. They go

through your stomach lining into your blood stream. From there they

find nerve tissue in your spinal cord, brain stem, and brain. They

live there for a few years eating and multiplying until a few prions

turn into billions and then they get down to some serious brain

consumption.

"You will be moody and unproductive at first. Then you will become

very depressed. You will walk funny and be uncoordinated. Your

family will think you're drunk or have a drug problem. A visit to

the doctor will reveal a brain problem. It will be called genetic or

spontaneous. The medicos and the government will be falling all over

themselves to deny it's madcow. The doctors do not want to do an

autopsy because they may be exposed to the disease and the

government won't let them because it might spoil the beef business.

You'll fall into a coma and you will die, but not before your family

has been buried in hospital bills. Better start saving." - Dave

Louthan

 

To protect the cattle and meat industry the government USDA has most

probably condemned millions of Americans to death already. The

number of cattle tested this past decade was a criminally small

percentage, insanely small, clearly intended NOT to find mad cow

rather than vice versa. This is what happens in a nation ruled by

corporations. This is the end result of capitalism. Money matters,

people do not. We are currently watching capitalism devour itself in

many many ways.

 

I was vegetartian for a number of years in my youth, when I was

first studying yoga at an ashram in New York state. I'm not sure

when or why I slipped back into carnage. As I said, the meals we eat

as children have a deep and profound effect. Try going to a strange

foreign land for a year, as I did in India. First you will enjoy the

exotic diet, but by the twelfth month you will be longing for the

kind of food you ate as a child. You will be dreaming of it. I

remember longing for lettuce and mayonaise. There is neither in

India. They are too delicate for India's non-refrigerated punishing

heat. I could make a tomato and cucumber sandwich there, but without

lettuce and mayonaise it just wasn't the same. The childhood diet

seems to get written on our very core.

 

But in the case of beef in 2004 I think everyone should consider

that the time has come to perhaps make a life saving effort to

change this particular eating habit because these prions are deadly

and I'm sure, due to the criminal negligence of the capitalistic

USDA - which is supposed to protect us but protects corporations

instead - I'm sure that these prions are all over the place by now.

How could they not be? You can't destroy them. They aren't even

alive! They are molecules. They would make the perfect biowarfare

device. Molecules! (If you have guessed I am writing this to

convince myself - you are correct!)

 

Then again there is the killing-fields thing. Once I asked the

Indian sage Vimala Thakar about eating meat. She said simply that if

one lived in a place where meat was the only available thing to eat,

then of course one would have to eat it. But if other food was

available and it was possible to live without killing, then that was

preferable. To live without killing was preferable.

 

We don't even kill in a holy and consciencious way anymore. In

ancient times, and still in certain places in the world, people

acknowledged their shame about taking life by always offering the

animals to God first. The animals would be taken to the temple,

offered unto God, and then killed while prayers and holy words were

chanted. It was out of respect for the animal. This a great

misunderstanding we have in the West when people talk about "animal

sacrifice." They are not killing animals for worship, they are

blessing their food. It is a much more dignified death that the

chamber of horrors that is the modern slaughter-house where animals

are killed without respect or any conscious acknowledgement of the

preciousness of their lives. Rather than send our animals to the

temple to be killed we send them to our own version of an animal

Auschwitz.

 

There has been a wonderful series on the National Geographic Channel

called "Worlds Apart" where typical middle class families are sent

to various third world countries to live amongst the natives for 2

weeks or so. The rules are that they must live exactly as the native

people do and share their lives and their work. In every episode I

watched there is moment when the animals must be killed and often it

is the American father who must accept the honor of killing the

evening meal, a chicken or a sheep or a goat. The horror experienced

by the whole American family is incredible to watch. They are so

shocked, so filled with anger and sorrow, often breaking down in

tears and turning their heads away. They feel it is too brutal, the

cutting of the throat, the flow of blood, the dying of the living

entity right before their eyes. But where do they think the meat

they eat at home comes from? Most don't quite make the connection

and see the irony, but one mother in one episode has the wisdom to

explain to her weeping son that the nicely wrapped packages of meat

in the supermarket at home comes from just such a dying animal, such

a death incident. We have insulated ourselves so much from the

killing that we don't even give it a second thought.

 

Maybe mother nature is telling us something through this new prion

disease. Maybe it's time now, for our own good, to switch to a more

vegetarian diet. It need not be absolute. Fish and fowl are still

there. But beef and sheep, I fear, are getting just too dangerous.

 

Hindus don't eat beef, in particular, because they view the cow as a

symbol of the bounty and grace of God. The cow gives us milk freely

for the asking, always giving, and from the milk come butter and

cheese. And when the cow dies of old age it gives again, giving us

leather, and horns for carving. So they worship the "sacred" cow and

consider eating it an insult to God. Adopting their view of the cow

might also help us in giving up our beef habit. The Hindu attitude

toward the cow is a gentle and loving and respectful one.

 

Can a whole nation give up an ingrained habit to save their lives?

Some will not, for sure. I intend to try. I think what really set me

thinking about this was not the Mad Cow Killer's story, but a dream

I had about 10 days ago. This really happened. I was dreaming

merrily away about something or other and suddenly my younger

brother appeared out of nowhere. He seemed really concerned and had

an urgent look on his face. I turned to him and he came up to me. He

looked at me and simply said: "You have mad cow disease." He was

very concerned about me. Not sure what happened next but I dreamed

some more, other stuff happened. Then I saw my brother again. I

realized he had been following me around all the while. He grabbed

me and seemed irritated that I would not pay attention to him. "You

already have mad cow disease!" he said again.

 

I woke up soon after and was haunted by the feeling of my brother

telling me I already had Mad Cow. It really creeped me out all day

long. Was it a communication from the "other world" that I had

already gotten the prions? From a hamburger? Maybe from the most

delicious steak I ever ate out of the kindness of my father? Or was

it perhaps a warning to stop eating beef now. I latched onto that

thought and kept it, because what could I do with the other thought?

Yes, surely, it was a warning, not the knowledge of a death sentence

already passed. Yes, a warning. Not a death sentence. A warning from

the other world to give up eating beef NOW.