Dog vs Cow – and towards us becoming Significantly More Humane.

Is there something in dog which makes it more precious or important than cow? If same question was raised for comparison between a man and cow, the answer would be obvious to the tune of rendering the question itself foolish.

But what is there in dog which makes it not just more important but probably 1000 times more important than a cow.

After all, law forbids not only killing of a dog, but even torturing or treating it badly.

While under the same land of law, we are not only allowed to kill a cow but cross all boundaries of insanity and torture cows in inhumane ways throughout their life and finally mercilessly kill them. Yes, I am referring to the process of animal farming for meat production.

(Cows should not lose hope though. There are trends which will at some point of time propel them to the status of dogs – what a day that would be for cow community! – read on…).

One may argue (and I won’t oppose it), that animal farming is essential for our survival and man has always been meat eater and so on.

But then why we want to protect the dogs and other pets. I mean an owner of a slaughter house may legally torture and kill countless cows but then could find himself in jail for killing his one dog!

Does it not looks height of hypocrisy!!!

Well, think deeper, it can be explained.

It is simple. Have you not heard of the saying, “All Men Are Dogs”. Have you ever heard “All Men Are Cows!” – I bet never. Dogs being closer to human beings get much higher status compared to cows.

Well, jokes apart, here is a more serious explanation –

Humans by nature, are very self centered. In contrast, they also have deep routed feelings of compassion for fellow being and animals. However, this compassion translates into behavior and laws only where it does not clashes with self centered nature. 

Cow is a food for us, so unfortunately loses all its right for compassion of even life.

Dog is not our source of food and in fact, as pet provides other benefits like safety, companionship and so on. So we as society and law makers jump onto compassion band wagon and make all sort of laws for its protection and well being and their by ourselves feel good and get a sense of being more civilized.

In Vitro meat may change all this in near term within couple of decades – Yes, couple of decades is near term.

We have been able to grow beef right from cow stem cells. Genetic advancements currently have exponential pace and this is likely to remain. At some point (within decade or two), Genetically grown beef will match (I mean almost) the taste of beef coming from cow slaughter. It will also match price point and will provide countless benefits for both our health and health of environment. The benefits include:

– Much more nutritious.
– Extremely less chance of contamination.
– Environment friendly.
– the list goes on.

Once that happens, its popularity will skyrocket. Within a generation (That is what it usually takes for social values to catch up with economic and other drivers of change), the act of torturing and killing animal “just for food”, will be looked upon with stigma. Imagine, if slavery was still followed in some parts of the world, how that would be looked upon by any civilized (yes, we like to call ourselves civilized!), society.

It is only a matter of time before laws against animal slaughter and torture will follow.

(That will be the day when  cows get the status of dogs.)

Neeraj