With the addition of moral vegan outrage, marginalised communities will be further pushed over the brink and even labelled as exploiters, rapists and insensitive humans.
Published Jun 08, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 09, 2025 | 12:35 PM
Cow on green field. Representational Image. (iStock.)
Synopsis: When human breast-milk banks are set up, it is not because the women donors have been raped or had milk forcibly extracted, as apparently being done on dairy animals. The fact is that more milk can be biologically produced than needed by a baby or calf.
The speed at which Arvind the Animal Activist rattles off information confers upon him an air of knowledge that allows him to drive people on a guilt trip. Sample this: “Would you steal milk from a lactating ‘female human’? If not, then why do you steal from the cow, milk intended for the calf?”
On issues such as nutrition and food, which especially in India, are loaded with political, social, caste, cultural, religious, nutritional, and economic baggage, it should be mandatory to be thoughtful and aware.
For some reason, Arvind seems to be under the misconception that the “female humans’” breast, akin to that of a dairy animal’s udder, is a fixed capacity milk container, holding given litres of milk for its baby or calf, as the case may be, and if consumed by anyone or anything else, there would be nothing left for the baby/calf.
Therefore, according to him, the milk produced by each dairy animal should be consumed only by its calf, and it is immoral and cruel for humans to be consuming milk.
Moving closer to the truth, human milk (like dairy) is produced through a complex interaction of hormonal, neurological, and other mechanisms. Lactation primarily depends on two hormones: Prolactin, which stimulates tissues in the breast to secrete milk and oxytocin, which helps milk flow along the mammary ducts by stimulating contraction.
This is called the milk letdown reflex or milk ejection reflex. The milk flows as long as the baby suckles. This is why the mother doesn’t run out of milk supply even if she is feeding two or more children at the same time (as with twins/triplets, etc).
When human breast-milk banks are set up, it is not because the women donors have been raped or had milk forcibly extracted, as apparently being done on dairy animals. The fact is that more milk can be biologically produced than needed by a baby or calf.
So, technically speaking, the idea that there is a limited milk supply is fallacious. Even so, there is, most certainly, the ethical dimension of how much milk should be extracted. The West has several livestock-related practices that can, by standard definitions, be classified as greedy, gluttonous and wasteful.
Pastoralism and farmers owning small parcels of land with a few dairy animals, as practised in India, contribute to employment, income and nutrition. The calf is fed some part of the milk, while another part of it is sold or consumed by the family taking care of it. This need not be a distressing experience.
However, when dairy animals are factory-farmed, force-fed with processed, genetically modified junk that they are not normally used to consuming, and milked in a way that causes pain, while also causing distress to the calf, it amounts to exploitation and cannot be condoned. Animal rights activists are justified if they demand an end to these specific practices.
One must also remember that the danger of exploitation abounds in every sphere of life and cannot be used as a justification to push for veganism and reject nutrient-dense animal foods. Demanding that livestock be removed from the ecological discourse is ill thought out, and in India, cattle slaughter bans have paradoxically shown a decrease in indigenous breeds.
Arvind rattles off a list of essential amino acids and claims that seitan, made of vital wheat gluten and chickpea flour, can be used as a replacement for meat. “Humans are not wild animals. We don’t do things that wild animals do, so why should we kill and eat meat like them?” he asks.
Nutritional needs
In this tirade, the way humans evolved over generations seems to have passed him by. We cannot manufacture B12 or digest cellulose. We don’t chew cud for most of the day as dairy animals do. Although nutrients from plant source foods (PSF) are less absorbed than from animal source foods (ASF) than this can be improved with interventions to improve bioavailability and reduce anti-nutrients such as trypsin inhibitors, tannins, etc., in PSF.
Children require more protein (around 1.2 g of egg protein/kg or 2.0 g of mixed vegetable protein/kg for a child aged between one and two years) than adults do because of their rapid growth. Given the small stomach capacity of children, it is practically difficult (as most parents would know) to expect a child to eat large portions or more frequent meals. It is easier to give them foods that have the maximum nutrient density in the least quantity.
Similarly, expecting pregnant women or unwell persons who may have nausea or loss of appetite to stuff their faces with bowlfuls of spinach and tofu rather than a nutrient-dense egg or a bowl of hot soup or curd is impractical.
If you, like Arvind the Animal Activist, believe that whatever food is required for a vegan to stay healthy is available in the Indian ration shops, you should also understand that most people who eat food from ration shops are malnourished, have higher death rates, higher non-communicable diseases and are more prone to infections.
In a country with stunting in children of 38–40 percent, people should stop romanticising the cereal-heavy diets being pushed on the majority of the population, who are mostly from a lower caste and class hierarchy than the advocates of veganism.
‘Othering’ the marginalised
Since Arvind acknowledges that there is no known natural source of Vitamin B12, at what age would he start supplementing infants and children, and why is he okay with lower quality commercially manufactured B12 supplements but not better quality naturally available products?
He also promotes soya as an alternative to chicken. It has been demonstrated that soya has low digestibility and bioavailability, can lead to loss of weight in children, and reduced levels of calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, and zinc.
Many communities, most of them marginalised, are already unfavourably affected by cattle slaughter bans, which are primarily brought in for religious and caste reasons.
With the addition of moral vegan outrage, these communities will be further pushed over the brink and even labelled as exploiters, rapists and insensitive humans. A further layer of callousness would be added to sociopathic mobs perpetrating cattle vigilantism through lynching.
We need to, as rational adults, think about whether we are okay with this ‘collateral damage’ brought about by privileged individuals without consultations with those most likely to be adversely affected.
Humans, like animals and plants, are part of a larger ecosystem that is interdependent. Humans consume animals and plants and also make themselves available to be consumed by plants, micro-organisms, and other animals in one form or the other. In producing foods for themselves, humans also take away animal life knowingly or unknowingly.
Monocropping over large tracts of land kills animals, insects, snakes, birds, etc., directly or indirectly. It is a pretension to believe that vegans are so ethical that they leave no carbon footprints or lead cruelty-free lives.
Co-existing with ASF
Interdependence, if done respectfully, is more sustainable than ultra-processed foods and supplements. Farmers in India have a co-existence with their livestock, even as they accept that these have to be sold someday for meat and other products. Taking away livestock from this equation is a setback not just for farmers but our entire agricultural ecosystem.
Ruminant livestock can convert non-human inedible resources such as crop residues, grass, shrubs, leaves, etc., into nutrient-dense meat and milk for human consumption, as well as several by-products that support livelihoods.
The evolution of humans, including the crucial development of the brain and other organs, has been attributed to the consumption of ASF, particularly bone marrow and organ meat. Removing these foods from the equation will lead to a qualitative deterioration of the human species. People like Arvind breeze through these complex issues that mainly affect those who are socially and economically far removed from him and his ardent followers.
Demanding better systems of livestock and poultry farming is one thing. It’s quite another thing to use one’s privilege of language and access to educational and other spaces to guilt-trip people using half-baked misinformation. Asking people to give up on nutrient-dense foods is impractical, unscientific, and unethical. Appealing as it may sound, veganism is not a magic wand for the world’s problems.
(The author is a Bengaluru-based public health doctor. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
