Can someone explain to me how India is simultaneously the largest milk producer in the world (accounting for 24% of total production) while cows are revered as a deity in Hinduism and Buddhism? After all, for a cow to produce milk, it needs to give birth to a calf every year. In India, the cattle population is 300 million – the largest in the world. True, regular cows (the sacred ones) number only 60 million, but that is still a lot. Thus, if the calves are left alive, their number should ideally double each year. Even assuming that only a third are functional, in five years their number should have increased from 300 million to 1.2 billion, continuing exponentially. Additionally, over these five years, half of the cows should be retiring (usually they end up at a meat processing plant) – clearly they are not being cremated by the river. Therefore, each year a huge number of calves and cows must be slaughtered for meat or sold for slaughter. It turns out that the dairy industry cannot exist without the meat industry. How does this coexist with Hinduism?
Yes, I know that not only cows but also buffaloes produce milk, and there are also a huge number of them. But we are talking about cows right now.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 