What is the relationship between humans and animals? What is animal cruelty, and who defines it? These are tricky questions and do not have definite answers. These questions frequently arise due to the controversy surrounding various forms of alleged animal abuse. Homo sapiens have an unequal and complicated relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom, which has evolved over many million years. Animals come into contact with humans in a variety of ways: as food, pets, entertainment (sports that may or may not involve killing the animals), as experimental animals in the pharmaceutical and medical industries, as beasts of burden, and as war animals.

Since time immemorial, animals have played a major role in wars. The battles and invasions most commonly involved elephants and horses. A theory claims that one of the reasons for victories in ancient times was because the invaders used domesticated horses. Conventional wars no longer use animals, but there are many instances when they become transport vehicles for powerful bombs.

A few species qualify to become pets and receive security and affection from humans. Dogs, cats, birds, and fish are the most common, but there are instances of humans that have more exotic species as pets. A person I knew in the UK had a donkey for a pet. There are curious people who keep snakes as pets. These are not killed but are the object of human affection and sometimes serve as a cure for man’s loneliness and isolation. Fish, of course, when not used as pets in aquariums, are a wholesome diet all around the world.

Pet abuse is a favourite obsession of NGOs like PETA. The rules dealing with pets can be quite cumbersome and strict, with animal rights crusaders breathing heavily on the backs of individuals and governments. Maybe it is a beneficial thing. Zoo-sadism is a serious issue, but it is hopefully not a common occurrence. We can never know unless the form of cruelty to animals is extremely gross.
The number of animals used in the medicinal industry is too mind-boggling to even mention. Thousands of animals undergo testing before any doctor performs a procedure or gives a drug to humans. The medicinal procedure’s safety entails the sacrifice of mute animals who have no interest in, or awareness of the procedures involved. The majority of humans are blissfully ignorant of these million sacrifices made daily. We are enjoying the longevity provided by the medical and pharmaceutical industries because of experimentation and trials on an infinitude of animals.

Animals, sometimes without anaesthesia, are used to devise and perfect every surgical procedure that benefits humans. These days, the regulations are stricter; there are artificial models to perfect surgical procedures and tissue slices instead of live animals to test drugs and vaccines on. However, the blood of millions of animals sacrificed for human benefit, even if not in a ‘humane’ manner, forms the foundation of our health and longevity. We all recall the dissection of frogs during our biology lessons, and unknown to many, numerous surgical vocations, particularly laparoscopy, begin in animal laboratories. Patients undergoing surgery may not be interested in learning about the ‘how’ of the doctor’s skill set. This would be the situation for even the hard-core animal rights activists, subjecting themselves to emergency medications and surgical procedures.

Circuses and sports of various forms, such as jallikattu, bullfighting, and deer hunting, are examples of using animals as sport. Sometimes, the animals, like hens, do not die, but many times, they end up on the dinner plate of the owner. The victorious animals tend to consume more food in preparation for the next battle, but their fates are similar. Surely, none of the birds fighting during the Sankranti period would die a natural death of old age. This is an area where animal rights advocates, the media, and lawyers are actively involved. Leisure and sport are hard to eliminate from the human genome. The use of animals for sport and entertainment can never end. Witness a horse racing event to believe that.

Food animals are too numerous to mention. Chickens, pigs, goats, and cows, bred in captivity, provide food for humans commonly. The conditions and methods of breeding these animals would cause even the most resilient individuals to recoil in horror. Many hard-core non-vegetarians have turned vegetarian after seeing some of the breeding and meat-making processes. Most of the procedures used on animals are something we would not be remotely comfortable doing to humans.

Ecology, Global Warming, and Other Issues

There are many arguments in favour of consuming meat—nutrition content being one of them. Low-cost food is another. A major argument is that agricultural land would not be enough to feed the ever-increasing population. Again, this is arguable. The question is: Is it necessary for humans to consume animals for survival? The conversion of lands for the purpose of feeding livestock and processing their excretions is a significant contributor to land and air pollution. Some authorities, in fact, have put the blame for global warming on animal farming.

Timothy Clack in his wonderful book, ‘Ancestral Roots’, makes a strong argument against meat eating. These are some of his arguments against non-vegetarianism (with some paraphrasing and summarising):

“Whether our ancestors were hunters, scavengers, or gatherers is a topic of significant debate, and the truth is, they were all three. Our flexible approach to food saw us through environmental shortages and catastrophes. Plants allowed us to live, but meat was probably important in evolution. The meat industry feeds animals with much of the vegetable matter that can serve as human food. Meat also happens to be the most uneconomical of all food sources. For every 21 kg of protein fed to a farm animal, the meat industry produces 1 kg of protein for human consumption. Large amounts of waste are the main source of inefficiency. However, the vegetarian option is seven times more efficient than the non-vegetarian option. Cultivating rich plants such as broccoli or oats could provide us with 60 times more iron and 13 times more calcium compared to using the land for dairy cows. In fact, if the US population reduced its meat consumption by 1.5%, it would free up enough grain to feed 18 million people who die of starvation each year. Additionally, the bio-gas industry generates pollution and inflates food prices by using land better suited for agriculture.

One can judge a society by its treatment of its animals. The animal world is not merely alive but is living life. Animals have a capacity to feel pleasure and pain, at least at the physical level. Humans may not agree with the concept of pain on a mental level. We have been urbanising our cattle. Feeding them non-adaptable foods, such as corn for livestock, primarily beef cattle, results in the conversion of agricultural lands to corn production. Currently, livestock in the US consume 60% of the corn that grows. Furthermore, the heavy use of growth stimulators, artificial supplements, steroids, and antibiotics has accelerated cattle growth from a life cycle of three and a half years to 16 months today. Animals in the wild have a relatively peaceful life until they most likely face a dire end. The clear majority of animals live a peaceful existence. But in the modern meat industry, an animal’s life is dire from beginning to end.

Humans indulge in psychological tricks to deal with meat eating.

• We tend to view animals as species instead of individuals. As a result, we eat chickens (the species) rather than individual chickens. This protects us from the pain the chicken goes through at the abattoir.
• We take the animal completely out of the equation. As a result, we eat beef, meat, pork, and mutton, but not cows, sheep, pigs, or goats. This allows some detachment at a psychological level.

The agricultural industry spreads the cost elsewhere, keeping meat prices low in shops. Therefore, it is not appropriate to use the low cost of meat as a justification for universal non-vegetarianism. The meat industry has become the biggest threat to the continued existence of modern humans.

At any given time, the global agriculture industry is feeding 1.1 billion pigs, 1.8 billion sheep and goats, and 15.4 billion chickens. One million humans produce the same amount of waste as 250,000 pigs or 150 million chickens. Manure is not processed like human waste, and much of it is spread over the fields. Rains wash away a significant amount of the large, concentrated levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the manure, polluting groundwater, rivers, and streams. Infected groundwater causes health problems with bacteria like E. coli. Manure in streams and rivers rapidly increases plant life. When the plants decay, they decrease the amount of oxygen in the aquatic world, killing a lot of marine life. This process is called eutrophication. Hence, natural resources are depleted. Today, 50% of lakes in Europe and the USA are eutrophic. Faecal contamination of meat products is very high because of the insanitary conditions of the feedlot and slaughter houses.

The meat industry uses disproportionately more energy for transportation than it does for output. Compared to agricultural practices, the meat industry consumes more water. Additionally, the meat industry converts a significant amount of land to grow food for livestock, a process that further depletes fuel sources during transportation. Each pound of steer meat from a US feedlot requires about 10,000 litres of water. A pound of potato requires about 50 litres of water. Livestock drink about half of the water consumed in the United States. Finally, there is enough land on Earth to produce enough crops to feed humans many times over their current population.”

He makes many other serious arguments against non-vegetarianism. However, it would be simply foolish to even expect that the world will stop eating meat. In almost all countries in the world, the percentage of vegetarians is in single digits, like 3% in the US and 6% in Europe! India stands between 29 and 40%, which is clearly an outlier. Individuals have the freedom to make their own choices, and enforcement is never possible. Hitler was a vegetarian and tried to impose vegetarianism on his people, but his own trusted lieutenants largely ignored him, albeit a little discreetly!

Often, the debate against meat consumption solely comes from our own perspective. The animals rarely come into the equation. However, the world goes on happily consuming meat at an extraordinary and unstoppable level. Furthermore, what is considered ethical in one culture may be viewed as a horror in another. While we may not consider the consumption of snakes, monkeys, dogs, and cats acceptable, a significant number of cultures find this practice acceptable.

The Dharmic Way: Indian Thoughts

Swami Vivekananda spoke at length on meat consumption, and he was aware that it was a highly controversial topic. He says:

“About vegetarian diet I must say this – first, my Master was a vegetarian; but if he was given meat offered to the Goddess, he used to hold it up to his head. The taking of life is undoubtedly sinful; but so long as vegetable food is not made suitable to the human system through progress in chemistry, there is no other alternative but meat-eating. So long as man shall have to live a Rajasika (active) life under circumstances like the present, there is no other way except through meat-eating. Rather let those belonging to the upper ten, who do not earn their livelihood by manual labour, not take meat; but the forcing of vegetarianism upon those who must earn their bread by labouring day and night is one of the causes of the loss of our national freedom.

All liking for fish and meat disappears when pure Sattva is highly developed, and these are the signs of its manifestation in a soul: sacrifice of everything for others, perfect non-attachment to lust and wealth, want of pride and egotism. The desire for animal food goes when these things are seen in a man. And where such indications are absent, and yet you find men siding with the nonkilling party, know it for a certainty that here there is either hypocrisy or a show of religion.

In this way, discussions of a conflicting character, giving rise to mutual abuses, quarrels, and fights, are going on. After carefully examining all sides of the debate and putting aside the widespread fanaticism surrounding this delicate issue of food, I can confidently affirm that the Hindus are correct. This is due to the injunction of the Hindu Shastras, which stipulates that food, like many other aspects, should vary depending on one’s birth and profession. This conclusion is sound. But the Hindus of the present day will neither follow their Shastras nor listen to what their great Acharyas taught.

To eat meat is surely barbarous and vegetable food is certainly purer—who can deny that? For him surely is a strict vegetarian diet whose one end is to lead solely a spiritual life. But he who must steer the boat of his life with strenuous labour through the constant life-and-death struggles and the competition of this world must take meat. So long as there will be in human society such a thing as the triumph of the strong over the weak, animal food is required; otherwise, the weak will naturally be crushed under the feet of the strong. It will not do to quote solitary instances of the good effect of vegetable food on some person or persons: compare one nation with another and then draw conclusions.”

Indian scriptures, including the Gita, stress moderation rather than complete abstinence regarding dietary practices, like in almost all other areas. Eating meat is not a sin, a crime, or even an offence in Hinduism. Vegetarianism is the recommended and prescribed diet, but it is not mandatory.

This Manusmriti quote (5.56) summarises the Dharmic stance on non-vegetarianism:

na māṃsa bhakṣaṇe doṣo na madye na ca maithune |
pravṛttir eṣā bhūtānām nivṛittis-tu mahā phale ||

There is no sin in eating meat, drinking spirituous liquor, or having intercourse; that is the natural way of being, but abstention brings great rewards.

Devotees frequently questioned Ramana Maharishi about the significance of diet. He was never vehemently opposed to meat but simply said that as one ascends the spiritual path, the craving for it disappears. Although the ashram exclusively served vegetarian food, he did not object to his devotees consuming it outside. Paul Brunton records a conversation with Ramana Maharishi, who says that food affects the mind. Eating the right food enhances sattvik qualities. Habit is only an adjustment to the environment. The mind has trained itself to perceive certain foods as tasty. Ramana Maharishi continues that vegetarian food can provide just as much nourishment as meat. But the realised person’s mind is not influenced by the food eaten. In response to Paul Brunton’s question, “If it’s about not killing, then even plants have life,” Ramana Maharishi simply replied, “So do the tiles you’re sitting on!” While eating meat is disconnected to spiritual illumination, it is preferable to consume sattvik food instead. Ramana Maharishi says that once illumination comes, what one eats will make less difference, just as on a great fire it is immaterial what fuel is added. Ramana was also questioned about using milk but not eggs, and he replied that domesticated cows yield more milk than their calves require, and they find it a pleasure to be relieved. Eggs contain potential lives.

Extinctions and Evolution

Humans have clearly an ambivalent relation with rest of the animal kingdom; and primarily, we have not left them alone. The use and abuse of animals is part of the evolutionary game, and there is no way we can avoid that. We have reached where we are because of exploitation and selective killing of other species. We cannot apply moral standards and ethics in our behavior towards them selectively. It is all right to consume them; but we seem to have exacting standards to deal with them when used as pets or for entertainment. Again, the size of the animal seems to matter in the scheme of things. We do not have any problems with the sacrifice of millions of rats, mice, guinea-pigs (sometimes killed during advanced stages of pregnancy) to study medicines and procedures; but horses and elephants used for film shooting becomes an area of intense discussion. Cockroaches do not seem to enjoy animal rights too. Apparently, the shock came from one Hollywood film where bombs blew up horses literally for a war scene. The shock would not have materialized even for a thousand cockroaches.

Animals go extinct at a certain rate, but the injection of humans have hugely accelerated the process of extinction of animal species. The classical example was the dodo bird, a flightless and friendly bird, who was a favourite hunting target for soldiers. They went extinct in a short span due to indiscriminate hunting, amongst other reasons. Sean Carroll, in his brilliant book, The Making of the Fittest, describes the declining whales in the northern waters of Antarctic due to Norwegian fishing. Norway took 236 whales between 1904 and 1906. This figure rose rapidly to 40,000 by 1940. All species of whales were hunted and till a moratorium came to curb whale hunting, the former 200,000 whales were reduced to just 600.

As the whaling industry faded, krill, at the center of Antarctic food web, became a target for large scale harvesting. Krill is used for human consumption, for livestock, and for fish farming. The most abundant animal on the planet, its density has dropped by over 80 percent in the last seventy-five years. Krill feeds on algae which determines, in turn, the sea ice. Global warming leads to sea ice melting which reduces the algae, and which reduces the krill population further. Similarly, icefish is facing a great catastrophe. First fished in 1971, the catch peaked to 235,000 tons by 1978. It fell down to 60 tons in 1992 with no hopes of recovery. Overfishing, ecosystem disruption, and climate change are deeply interlinked, and the author Sean Carroll warns that though we might have saved the blue whale from extinction after decades of discussions, but the larger lesson has not been learnt.

Concluding Remarks

We are only defining cruelty in the non-impacting areas of animal use. We are largely silent towards animal abuse in food and medical industry; we have created our own standards of what is ‘humane.’ Sports, entertainment, and domestication are the areas where animal cruelty is maximum in discussion. Most of these activities do not affect the humans in any great manner, and hence, the activism is sometimes excitement created by people who need an occupation.

In summary, there is no uniform moral or ethical stick by which we can say what is cruelty or non-cruelty to animals so long as they do not have a voice. There is no way we can speak for them and say this is what cruelty is all about. We have variable standards; and in such circumstances to talk about cruelty of Jallikattu and hen fights while having a chicken tikka masala does not make any sense. The Jain monks probably have some moral authority to talk about cruelty to animals; but for the clear majority of us, we must accept that humans are a branch of evolution with some distinct exploitative advantages towards survival, and we make use of it. It is good to have some moral standards in dealing with animal use; but they will always be fluid, grey, and interpretable. There can be no absolutes. It is commendable that organizations like PETA goes to the extreme of banning all forms of animal abuse, but that is a totalitarian view which goes against common sense as the world will never stop eating meat. Also, they are fighting evolutionary principles and hence is a lost battle from the word go.

We have been driving species to extinction many times over the natural rate, and that is alarming. Some water bodies have been completely emptied of fish due to extensive fishing. Maybe, it is evolution, maybe it is cruelty; nobody can really say. Animal rights have some similarity to foetal rights, but we have all gone through the foetal stage, and hence the empathy is much stronger. Unfortunately, our animal stage was millions of years ago, and the disconnect is stronger. The empathy and sympathy come forced. The aim would be to settle in a dynamic equilibrium where the animals do not outnumber us; and simultaneously, to make use of them for our own survival without completely removing them. It looks Utopian at present. And hence, Jallikattu, bull-fighting, deer-hunting, meat, and PETA, all will continue. This is the way of the world; this is the way of the complex human mind.

I remain a vegetarian by choice, consume milk and occasionally eggs, do not own pets, and consider the cow to be the holiest animal. I do not pass any value judgments or condemnations against others’ eating choices, except perhaps impossibly wishing that people give up beef. Indifference is mainly the hallmark of traditional cultures. This has been my personal journey of reconciliation and acceptance in the Hindu-Dharmic way. However, there can never be moral absolutes where humans do have an unequal equation with the animal world. Fundamentally, western cultures place humans on top, with the rest of nature and the animal kingdom at their disposal. The Dharmic way is gentler, where humans remain in a dynamic equilibrium and at peace with the non-human organic and inorganic worlds.