Animal Rights

Happy New Year! We all hope for a happy life and peaceful world, but still we see so much violence and war happening around the world. The strict law of karma deals measure for measure with anyone who violates the laws of nature. As long as the people of the world continue to murder and eat animals, they will perpetually suffer the sinful reactions of criminal violence and catastrophic wars. That is why I believe this to be a proper first post for the New Year. -V

The Case Against Animal Slaughter

(excerpted from Back to Godhead Magazine January 1976, Vol. 11 No. 1)

From the standpoints of health, economics and ethics, animal slaughter and meat-eating are detrimental to human society.

1. Slaughtering animals causes extreme suffering. Animals are sentient creatures with feelings like humans. Cows especially can sense that they are going to be slaughtered, and they live in constant fear.

2. We have no right to artificially end the life of any creature, especially that of a cow, who nurses her own offspring and the whole human society with her milk.

3. Killing animals breeds insensitivity toward all beings, sadism and general irreverence. Pythagoras taught, “Those who kill animals for food will be more prone than vegetarians to torture and kill their fellow men.”

The strict law of karma deals measure for measure with anyone who violates the laws of nature. As long as the people of the world continue to murder and eat their two most benign friends, the cow and bull, they will perpetually suffer the sinful reactions of criminal violence and catastrophic wars.

Animal Rights

This morning I was reading from Srila Prabhupada’s Srimad Bhagavatam:

…Any living being, if he terrifies other living beings, is a most wretched subject, and the king should at once kill such a disturbing element. As the wild animal is killed when it creates disturbances, similarly any man who unnecessarily kills or terrifies the jungle animals or other animals must be punished at once. By the law of the Supreme Lord, all living beings, in whatever shape they may be, are the sons of the Lord, and no one has any right to kill another animal, unless it is so ordered by the codes of natural law. The tiger can kill a lower animal for his subsistence, but a man cannot kill an animal for his subsistence. That is the law of God, who has created the law that a living being subsists by eating another living being. Thus the vegetarians are also living by eating other living beings. Therefore, the law is that one should live only by eating specific living beings, as ordained by the law of God. The Īśopaniṣad directs that one should live by the direction of the Lord and not at one’s sweet will. A man can subsist on varieties of grains, fruits and milk ordained by God, and there is no need of animal food, save and except in particular cases. (from purport SB 1.17.10-11)

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