Are we taking a cow’s blood in the form of her milk?

Answer Podcast

So, when we drink cow’s milk, the milk is also coming from her blood.
So, we are actually drinking her blood. Now, that way if we see, even a human infant drinks the mother’s milk and that milk comes from her blood. So, is it that baby is living on the blood of her mother? Are we going to blame the baby for drinking the mother’s blood? No.
So, we have to see that not just that one thing is a transformation of the other. Now, we may say at one level that blood transforms into milk, but it is an oversimplification. Firstly, because it is not that when the milk is produced, it is not that that causes a blood shortage in the body.
It is not that it causes a deficiency in the body. So, by the arrangement of nature, if that milk is made and that milk actually needs to be taken out. Sometimes if say, a woman becomes pregnant and somehow her baby dies or something like that, then often the milk that gets accumulated in their breast, they have to artificially take it out.
Otherwise, it becomes problematic. So, the point is that that milk is arranged by nature for the nourishment of others. So, in that sense, to say that we are drinking the blood of the animal is wrong because normally when we talk about say somebody takes the blood of someone else, that is by hurting others.
Say a parasite or an insect takes the blood from our host body. That actually harms. The blood is essential for the body’s functioning and circulation.
And when we take that out, that hurts not just physically but also physiologically in terms of creating a shortage in the body. But in the case of milk, it is not like that. Of course, it is possible that sometimes in commercialized areas, they may have machines which squeeze the udder of the cow so much and they keep squeezing that it causes great pain to the cow and that squeezing also continues till blood comes out.
That is unfortunate, that is horrible. And that should be avoided. So, in that case, devotees can try as much as possible to take Ahimsa milk where the cows are brought up in an atmosphere of love and care and not just treated as factors in a milk producing unit.
And where the milk is also taken out with love. And even devotees have the experience that sometimes they get some cows from some people and those people say that these cows don’t give any milk or they give very little milk to be viable. But in those cases, cows come in the devotee community and the cows live with people who care for them.
And the cows start giving more milk also. So, to say that we are taking cow’s blood in the form of a milk is a misunderstanding of the way nature works and the way it provides through a system of interdependence for various mutual dependence through cooperation among different living beings.