Vegetarians, Beware: Your Plate May Have Blood Stains || Acharya Prashant, on Veganism (2019)

Acharya Prashant

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00:00Every meat-eater is actually being subsidized, greatly subsidized by every

00:07non-meat-eater. This is injustice, this is direct stealing of money, pinching of

00:16money from the pocket of the vegetarian or the vegan to subsidize the meat-eater.

00:24When you eat meat, when you eat chicken, you are actually not paying for the

00:35environmental damage that your plate of meat has caused, you're not paying for

00:46the climate change, you're not paying for the biodiversity depletion, you're not

00:54paying for the loss of tropical jungles, green cover, nothing. None of that has

01:01been factored in into the price of your tandoori chicken. But the cost is

01:11enormous. So somebody is bearing that cost. Who is bearing that cost?

01:16Whole population. Whole population, meaning just to help you have your chicken,

01:23everybody else is paying the price. So if you are paying rupees 200 or 300 for

01:29your plate of chicken, its actual price should be maybe 800 or 1000 and it is

01:40gross injustice that the thing is being offered to you as a subsidy. So there has

01:49to be taxation, there has to be clear commensurate, just taxation, two things I

02:05talked of, culture and fiscal measures. Then there has to be education, people

02:14have to know, people have to know what milk is, people have to know what meat

02:20is, you will have to know the entire cycle. People talk so much about the

02:28right to information and everybody is so curious these days, people want to gossip,

02:32people want to say, no we want to know everything. First of all, don't you want

02:36to know what is going into your body? First of all, don't you want to know what

02:42is going into your body? So that has to be made known. Thirdly, it has to be

02:50made known that agriculture as such is not the absolutely holy profession it is

03:08made out to be. Very very people know, very very few people know that probably

03:18around two-thirds of all agriculture, rather three-fourths of all agriculture

03:23is just to support meat-eating. Now you'll wonder what am I saying, you'll wonder

03:32right people think of farmers as some kind of pursuers of a most noble

03:40profession, they say you know you should be a farmer. Especially in India,

03:48everybody is talking about poor farmers and this and that, everybody is talking

03:52of upholding farming and I support that, any person who is in need needs to be

03:58supported. But the field of farming, the entire industry of farming, the entire

04:06sector of agriculture, it has to be seen in perspective, we must know the facts,

04:11truth has to be exposed.

04:18Out of every four kilograms of grain that comes out from the farmers field,

04:25three kilograms goes towards feeding animals, so that they can be slaughtered

04:32and the meat-eaters can have their meat. That's the reality of agriculture.

04:43On one hand, we talk so much about preserving forests and if forests go, then the

04:49habitat of so many species just disappears. You need not physically

04:55eliminate those species, you just need to cut the forests down and those species

05:00are gone. Now why are the forests disappearing at such a huge rate? Do you

05:06know even as we are talking how many acres of forest has been cleared off in

05:12the last one hour itself? Can you even imagine? Now go find out, you'll be

05:17startled. Even as we are discussing this, at an unimaginable pace trees are being

05:25felled, unimaginable pace. Why are those trees being felled? So that there can be

05:33more agriculture, that agriculture goes towards feeding the ever-increasing

05:38population because we cannot live without kids. Further, we cannot live

05:45without our chicken wings and chicken burgers and mutton this and beef that. We

05:52do not even know that to get one kilogram of chicken or mutton or beef,

05:58you require probably 20, 30 or 40 kilograms of grains. So most of the

06:03grains that is being raised in the farmers fields is for the purposes of

06:09meat. That is something people must know. You cannot just blindly keep on talking

06:19of agriculture as something so holy and pious and natural. Are you getting it?

06:32Then the kids, the kids, the kids, reach out to them. It has to be a holy war. You

06:44have to, pardon me my language, invade schools. It's a battle for the mind.

06:57The kid must grow up knowing fully well that it's monstrous to kill an animal to

07:05eat it. Are you getting it? And that would require and change in the entire value system of the kid.

07:17Veganism cannot succeed if you just keep talking of animals. You keep saying, oh it

07:25is bad to look at animals as a commodity. It is bad to exploit animals. If man is

07:32exploiting man, why will man refrain from exploiting animals? So veganism has to be

07:38holistic, comprehensive. You may not like it to hear it this way, but veganism has

07:47to be basically a spiritual movement. Veganism has to be a movement of

07:52compassion and when compassion comes, you will not be compassionate towards merely the animals.

07:58When compassion rises in you, then you will be compassionate towards everything,

08:04everybody and yourself. First of all, you will cease to be cruel towards yourself,

08:11which most people are. So veganism needs to broaden its scope.

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