Draft copy for The Vegetarian Magazine, UK

[Guest guest]

Cow conferencers,

 

This is the draft copy I have sent to the UK

Vegetarian Society to be included in its fall version

of The Vegetarian Magazine.

 

Any suggestions would be greatfully aprreciated.

 

VEDA – the Vegetarian Environmental Development

Association, is an organisation dedicating to present

to the world community Protection Farms - a farming

system for the profitable lifetime protection of farm

animals. This matter was first presented in the summer

’99 issue of The Vegetarian. VEDA is happy to now

present its progress report for its workings of the

last two years.

 

VEDA has been consolidating its lead as the foremost

exponent of a secularised version of productive and

profitable lifetime farm animal protection. This has

mostly been achieved through networking with the other

bodies whose interest pertains to this matter. These

groups include the world’s vegetarian societies, vegan

societies, animal rights charities (CIWF, PETA, FARM,

etc.), environmental groups and various religious

groups.

 

A proposal was presented to the UK Vegetarian

Society’s Board of Trustees asking for the society to

actively back this farming system to the point of

including it in the charity’s constitution, thereby

absorbing the workings of VEDA. The latter was

rejected, but the society gave its backing to Veda’s

ambitions by allotting this space in The Vegetarian

Magazine to stimulate discussion.

 

All other aforementioned secular groups that responded

were looking for further leadership from VEDA, or

others, before entering the fray. Many though are run

by people whose dietary preference is vegan, and

therefore are, in some respects, morally opposed to

the use of animals in any form, whether lifetime

protected or not.

 

In terms of sectarian religious groups, the main

exponent of this matter is ISKCON, a Hindu groups more

commonly known as the Hare Krsnas, who endorse cow

protection as one of their fundamental religious

tenants. VEDA has been working with this group to

produce a business plan upon which any farmer or new

entrant to farming could analyse the costs and

benefits of this farming system, and take to it if

applicable.

 

There is as yet such a negligible supply of products

and services from Protection Farms in the Western

world as to say it is non-existent. Yet the

lacto-vegetarian diet is constantly growing, fuelling

a growth industry in all types of vegetarian processed

and non-processed foodstuffs, often organic and

non-transgenic.

 

Protection Farms does not yet have viable working

models upon which it can show the costs and prices of

its system. In theory it should be viable. Many

lacto-vegetarians should want to purchase goods and

services from a farming system where the animals are

protected for life. Milk and milk products could be

taken without hypocrisy. Leather, taken after the

natural death of the animal, could be freely worn.

Vegetables and grains could be consumed produced using

draft-powered intermediate technologies. Educational

and recreational trips to the farm, horse rides, ox

and cart rides, could be made with the full knowledge

that the animals on these farms are not destined for

the slaughterhouse.

 

The main production principals of Protection Farms are

based on population control though breeding not

slaughter, an extended lactation, agroforestal

(permacultural) multi-cropping systems, and draft

power. The main consumption principals of Protection

Farms are based on the value-based willingness for

consumers to substitute from conventional and organic

systems to Protection Farms (which is also organic),

with or without the necessity to pay premium prices

(as the costs and prices are yet to be known).

 

A dairy farm in a conventional, and even organic,

system will give their first calf at the end of its

second year. Its calf is separated after 24 hours and

is often sent for veal production or slaughtered if it

is of no value. The cow will then be machine milked

for 300 days (giving 6000 litres), delivering its

second calf 60 days later, having been impregnated

during pregnancy. This cycle will continue an average

of 5 times upon which the cow will be slaughtered

having passed its optimum economic efficiency. The cow

will have given 30,000 litres of milk throughout its

life.

 

At Protection Farms the cow will calve at 3-years

old, its calf will have the ability to suckle for its

natural period and will not be slaughtered but put to

use on the farm. Milk will be extracted by hand

milking for around 4 years from one lactation, giving

11,000 litres. This cycle can be repeated 3 times,

leading to only 3 new calves and a lifetime milk yield

of 33,000 litres, before the cow is retired to live

out its last years. A western-type cow will live an

average of 20 years.

 

What is needed is for the lacto-vegetarian, and other

interested parties, to speak out in a pro-active form,

to work through the established channels of dietary,

environmental, animal-rights and religious groups to

manifest the necessary value-based consumer demand,

thus stimulating production. Potential producers need

to nucleate behind a progressive force, like VEDA, to

bring forth the necessary resources and skills to

produce a business plan with newly derived costs and

prices and a business strategy to enable the willing

interchange between producers and consumers.

 

For further information on this issue, contact Mark

Chatburn, the founder and organiser of VEDA, at

protection_farms

 

 

 

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