Ahimsa Products – Promoting Veganism in Diet and Lifestyle
66Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that refers to the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain doctrine of non-violence and peace.
Statistics reveal that an average person utilizes the skin of 1.5-2 buffalo only for the sake of foot wear. Apart from that pollutants derived from the making of a shoe could include dioxin, volatile organic compounds, solvents, chromium, hide waste effluent, and isocyanates.
Life begins in the slaughterhouse
It is true that the life of all leather products begin in the slaughter house. Every year, the global leather industry slaughters more than a billion animals and tans their skins and hides. Even exotic animals like alligators are plucked from their habitat and factory-farmed for their skins.
Our soccer shoes come from kangaroo skin. Kid goats may be boiled alive to make gloves and the skins of unborn calves and lambs-some purposely aborted, others from slaughtered pregnant cows and ewes-are considered especially "luxurious."
An estimated 2 million dogs and cats are killed in China to meet the demand for their skin.
Source: Ahimsa Leather - http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Ahimsa_Leather#The_Alternative_View_from_the_Indian_Leather_Technologists.27_Association_in_India
Ahimsa Silk
In the Ahimsa product category silk is manufactured, unlike in the traditional process, without killing large numbers of silkworms. Silk made by this method is termed as Ahimsa Silk. In India, Ahimsa Silk is produced in many parts, including Benares, Jharkhand, Murshidabad, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The process of silk-culture or sericulture is one in which silk is harvested by boiling the pupae, thereby killing them to obtain their cocoons that are filled with silk. For instance, 1 gram of silk is produced by killing nearly 15 silkworms and 1,500 silkworms are sacrificed for a mere metre of silk cloth. While silk is produced by many insects, such as bees, ants, wasps and spiders, textile silk can only be manufactured from the silk of moth caterpillars.
Under sericulture, silk moths are made to lay eggs on specially prepared paper. The eggs hatch to produce caterpillars who are fed fresh mulberry leaves for nourishment. After a period of 35 days and some four moltings, the silkworms turn 10,000 times heavier due to their active spinning of the cocoon. Straw frames are placed over the trays of silkworms to prevent them from moving, as the spinning requires the worms to move their heads inside the cocoon. Liquid silk produced in the silkworms' glands is forced through spinnerets. This liquid silk is then coated with sericin, a water-soluble gum that solidifies when in contact with air. In one or two days, a silkworm easily spin a mile's length of filament, all of which is encased within the cocoon.
At the end of this process, the silkworm metamorphoses into a moth, but is usually killed using heat before it turns into a moth. Moths are cultivated separately for breeding more silkworms. About seven days before maturity, the cocoons are collected and put into heat chambers with temperatures varying between 70°C and 90°C for about four hours. The worm is killed and the cocoon filled with silk is collected for spinning. To manufacture a five-yard, hand-woven silk sari, for instance, you would need to boil about 50,000 silkworms.
More in Ahimsa Silk - http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Ahimsa_Silk
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Ahimsa Milk? To me, that just sounds like an oxymoron. In regards to cow's milk, practicing Ahimsa would be to not drink the milk of another species at all - it confuses them, takes away from the milk their baby is meant to drink, and we just plain do not need it.
Madhavadasa Das 7 months ago
CERTIFIED AHIMSA MILK
A Business Angel Presentation
A decade ago, organic milk was available only in select health food stores. Now it is in the cooler of every major American supermarket and around the world. We are predicting that we can inaugurate another trend that will quickly prove to be far more beneficial and lucrative than organic milk from grass fed cows.
There are many millions of vegetarians and animal lovers in America and around the world who would prefer milk from happier, healthier, and more productive cows that are allowed to keep and nurse their calves within herds that will never be subject to slaughter. We call this milk Ahimsa Milk, ahimsa being the well known term for non-violence to man or beast. As experienced dairymen have demonstrated, Ahimsa Milk presently costs twice as much to produce in industrialized economies than what is popularly available. However, there are millions of consumers who will be happy to pay the extra cost to make Ahimsa Milk a reality once they grasp the vision of the health, social and ecological benefits for trending in this direction. And it is our job to create that vision, the technology, and the economic system to make it a reality. Moreover, there are already in place many cow protection organizations that will promote and distribute Ahimsa Milk.
Ahimsa Milk is healthier and happier for cows and humans, as well as the earth we all share. Those for whom the costs might appear to be too high can learn how to consume less milk and appreciate it more. And as we develop new technologies to gainfully employ oxen, the cost of Ahimsa Milk will come down. There are also many humanitarian individuals and organizations that will help to make Ahimsa Milk affordable for all.
There is nothing more pleasant, peaceful, and natural than draft animal agriculture, and no system can be more sustainable, because it is perfectly in accord with natural law. The by products of cows nourish crops, which in turn nourish people and animals. Cows, bulls, calves, and working oxen provide milk, power, manure, and peace of mind, as well as jobs, companionship and natural beauty, and their increasing use will create new industries and technologies such as oxen electric, transportation, tourism, and harnessing. The earth, man, and cows are perfectly designed for one another.
We are asking investors, agriculturalists and inventors to develop traditional cow, bull and oxen agriculture alongside modern industrial models to compliment one another, each serving as a back up for the other and maximizing the effectiveness of the other. To do so is to invoke the blessings of our God given creative intelligence as well as the genius of the natural world.
Fairfield, Iowa, home of the Maharishi University of Management, The International Government of World Peace* and Vedic City, is certainly the best place in America to do this, and quite possibly the best hope for integrating the blessings of the eternal Vedic principles of totally sustainable agriculture within the modern world.
WHY PROTECT COWS AND THEIR OFFSPIRING
Quotes from Cows Are Cool, Love ‘Em, by Dr. Sahadeva Das, PhD (cowism.com)
“According to organic farmer Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows, cows ‘can be highly intelligent, moderately so, or slow to understand; friendly, considerate, aggressive, docile, inventive, dull, proud or shy.’
“According to recent research, in addition to having distinct personalities, cows are generally very intelligent animals who can remember things for a long time. Animal behaviorists have found that cows interact in socially complex ways, developing friendships over time, sometimes holding grudges against cows or men who treat them badly, forming social hierarchies within their herds, and choosing leaders based upon intelligence. They are emotionally complex as well and even have the capacity to worry about the future.
“For meat eaters, once they were a byword for mindless docility. But modern research is finding out that cows have a complex mental life. Of course, even a child in traditional cultures knew this all along.”
A FEW WAYS TO ENGAGE OXEN
1. Oxen have traditional uses such as plowing, turning grist mills, and hauling loads.
2. They are now being used to turn generators attached to mills and can power generators attached to ox carts to charge and distribute batteries.
3. Their manure is used to fertilize fields, dry and burn for fuel, make incense, and produce smoke for mosquito repellent.
4. Manure can also be used in flooring.
5. Manure has antiseptic qualities.
6. Placed in anaerobic digesters, manure produces heat, as well as methane and carbon dioxide that can be bubbled at high pressure through water to free up the methane by absorbing the carbon dioxide, thus producing CO2 enriched water to grow algae for food and bio-fuel. The solid residue has also been used as a replacement for sawdust providing bedding for cows.
7. Cow urine is used medicinally in traditional cultures, especially India.
8. Oxen give happiness to their mothers and fathers as well as their human handlers to increase health and productivity.
9. They provide therapeutic companionship (or cowpanionship) for humans and even across animal species.
10. They aerate and fertilize grass meadows with their hooves, manure, and urine, thus facilitating the rapid development of rich, fresh meadows when grazed rotationally.
11. They can haul loads and equipment in terrain not accessible to machinery.
12. Grazing cows and oxen restore fields compacted by tractors and poisoned by chemical fertilizers.
13. Cows and oxen have an uncanny gift for creating safe, easy to climb cow trails up hills and mountains, as every hiker knows.
14. Oxen create tourist appeal simply by their presence as well as use in transportation.
15. Oxen evoke love from their mothers that results in high quality milk and longer lactation periods.
16. Oxen are used in Vedic ceremonies to promote happiness and auspiciousness.
17. After their natural death, their bodies provide leather, meat for pets, and calcium rich bones, and so forth.
A SIMPLE ECCONOMIC CONSIDERATION
Charging twice as much for Ahimsa Milk should easily cover the maintenance costs for twice the number of members of the herd. Grazing oxen do not require the expense of milking parlors, milking machines, milk processing, storage and refrigeration, packaging and handling. Moreover, they can be an economic asset as described above.
HerdShare Community Supported Agriculture is already in use in the United States, and provides a model for funding the production of Ahimsa Milk. It also provides small producers with a vehicle for avoiding government regulations on commercial dairies which would stifle small producers and communities.