Well, peoples opinions and beliefs are difficult to change. Other problem in India is that politics & religion are highly convoluted.

Thus, the only way to show alternatives is the scientific way. In a big country like India you have many Breeds of cows to compare. May use Buffalo as the control as their milk is much more richer and they are good at utilising low quality feeds. some of the relevant factors might be feeding costs, milk production, Lactation numbers, lengths, calves (male/female), milk quality (Fat, Protein & other nutrients), dung gases (Gober gas). Convert all into cost:benefit analysis & so on. So do some OBJECTIVE analysis and include global climate impact. There is medical angle too. Because of the nature of fat globules cow milk fat will separate unless it is pasteurised and homogenised, the latter will releese xanthine oxidase that has implications that may be cardiovescular type. good luck

Dear colleague

With my ignorance of the politics of your country, its religions and, particularly, of the provisions of your government regarding indigenous cows, I can answer that the Indian cows deserve respect; they have been adapting to the environmental conditions and food resources of India for years, and I suppose they have been, and will be, the livelihood of millions of families.

I don't believe in presumptuous cows, but I do believe in presumptuous people. I believe that with the study of these noble animals, India will have useful information to improve their use for the benefit of their owners' families and to draw up policies for their preservation and genetic improvement, for instance, for the good of all.

I hope I have helped you. Sincerely

Redimio

Well, I can certainly do that. A cow nurtures not only her own calves but also gives milk for the suffering humanity. Is it humane to abandon or kill such animals? If one can kill his/ her mother after growing up, then certainly I can persuade the government to stop caring these cows. Can someone kill his father at the age of 70 years on the pretext of his being unproductive? If you justify that, I'd definitely ask government to stop caring unproductive cows. In America, there are cows, which are offered maintenance ration even during their unproductive life! They meet this expenditure by selling the milk at slightly higher price. The same is being practiced in India in a different way. It's unethical to starve those cows which gave milk in the prime of their youth. There's a need to think over the ethics and animal welfare aspects while discussing such problems.

Thank you Dr. Ashwani Roy. I think you haven’t understood the question properly. You are unnecessarily deviating from my questing by adding words like humanity, father, unproductive, killing etc. Moreover, you are committing a logical fallacy known as False Analogy (Wrongly assuming that because two things are alike in some ways, they must be alike in all ways).

All the animals (mammals) produce milk. Some prefer milk from Cows and others buffaloes, goats, camels which ever suits their needs and climatic conditions. All these animals get old. Parents also get older too. Generally, old animals aren't old parents. Therefore, don't conclude that old cows are same as old parents.

My main point is, many organisations, such as the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, the Sanjay Gandhi Institute of Dairy Technology, etc., spend restlessly much of their time and resources on the development of the diary with an emphasis on cows. My question is why again a special call on cows?, Already our central and local governments are investing crores of money and you scientists have been working in dedicating manner for the last half decade to prove cow as a powerful animal than any other on earth and to prove uniqueness of indigenous cows. Then also why a separate research call from DST to show indigenous cows uniqueness? For me, it is wasting of people money for nothing. Instead, DST should concentrate on the current issues of society. My request to you is not to mix unnecessary things while answering a proper question. Thank you, once again.

NDRI has been rearing cows for last so many years. Do you have any substitute for a dairy cow? If so, please suggest. The day you start making milk in a factory, all that funding or wasteful expenditure will stop. If there is some uniqueness of indigenous cow, that needs to be explored. My questions may look unnecessary to you but the ethical aspects cannot be ignored. We need to respect our traditional and cultural values too. If a cow doesn't deserve a special treatment, then why do we expect her to produce more than 50 litre of milk per day? Where people are buying and rearing dogs at much higher costs uselessly, we are questioning the utility of research funding on indigenous cows. Exotic cows last hardly 3 or 4 parities where as local breeds continue to produce milk even after 12 parities. Indigenous cow milk has zero cholesterol. It's well documented. We have never attempted improved breeding strategies to get selected germ plasm out of indigenous breeds of cattle. Indigenous cattle are more disease resistance. It's not just dung and urine as highlighted by certain media people. If raising an indigenous cow is useless, then why do a number of people want to rear them? There's a niche market for Desi cow's milk which is being sold at a much higher price than the exotic cow's milk.

Thank you Dr. Ashwani Roy. I really appreciate the NDRI contributions in Diary research.

I agree with you that we need cows with good milk yield. Why do we need milk? Milk is a need for humans. So, humans are more important than cows.

One should not need to equate a cow to a human.

· I will call a spade, a spade.

· I will my mother, mother.

· I will call a dog, dog.

· A cow is a cow.

One should not fall into the trap of false analogy.

One should be rational and not emotional while doing research. There should be logical consistency in our thinking and our research.

Let me go little bit back and ask these questions.

1) Why is that we are obsessed with cows?

2) Is it because of their superior good milk yielding nature?

3) Is it because of its milk quality?

4) Fundamentally, is the research meant for human good (meeting the needs of people)?

With this I want to conclude this discussion as I don’t want to waste your valuable time; and for me DST recent call for proposals on cow uniqueness was unscientific and wasting of people money.

Once again thanks for your valuable time.................................................

It may be out of context but I just share the views of a philanthropist Mr. Philip Wollen, ex- Vice-president of City Bank who has different views on a somewhat related topic.

There's no harm in reading it!

King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester “How do you see the world?”

And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”.

Shouldn’t we all?

Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair.

I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realised I had heard these screams before.

In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf.

Their cries were the cries of my father.

I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals.

And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy.

Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco.

CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the livestock industry are killing our oceans with acidic, hypoxic Dead Zones.

90% of small fish are ground into pellets to feed livestock.

Vegetarian cows are now the world’s largest ocean predator.

The oceans are dying in our time. By 2048 all our fisheries will be dead. The lungs and the arteries of the earth.

Billions of bouncy little chicks are ground up alive simply because they are male.

Only 100 billion people have ever lived. 7 billion alive today. And we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week.

10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species.

We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history.

If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus.

It is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions.

The world has changed.

10 years ago Twitter was a bird sound, www was a stuck keyboard, Cloud was in the sky, 4 g was a parking place, Google was a baby burp, Skype was a typo and Al Kider was my plumber.

Victor Hugo said “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.

There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world.

That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union!!

Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer – when it shouldn’t even be a question.

Meat is a killing industry – animals, us and our economies.

Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero!!

They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA – and they still won’t be able to pay for it.

Cornell and Harvard say’s that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO.

Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it.

Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry.

It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef.

1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.

If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.

Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport . . . . . planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.

Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?

The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.

We are facing the perfect storm.

If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age.

But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry.

The good news is we don’t have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it.

George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn’t run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks.

This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever.

The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. This cruel industry will end because we run out of excuses.

Meat is like 1 and 2 cent coins. It costs more to make than it is worth.

And farmers are the ones with the most to gain. Farming won’t end. It would boom. Only the product line would change. Farmers would make so much money they wouldn’t even bother counting it.

Governments will love us. New industries would emerge and flourish. Health insurance premiums would plummet. Hospital waiting lists would disappear.

Hell “We’d be so healthy; we’d have to shoot someone just to start a cemetery!”

So tonight I have 2 Challenges for the opposition:

1. Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet?

2. I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on I DARE YOU.

Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril.

The peace map is drawn on a menu. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.

Justice must be blind to race, colour, religion or species. If she is not blind, she will be a weapon of terror. And there is unimaginable terror in those ghastly Guantanamos.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn’t need this debate.

I believe another world is possible.

On a quiet night, I can hear her breathing.

Let’s get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers.

Please vote tonight for those who have no voice. Thank you.

Buddolla Viswanath's question was based on economic view point leavig aside the ethical justification. Dr Ashwani Roy opted for more holistic response. Problem with cost benefit analysis, as economists do it, is that we seldom appreciate & include all the ingredients. In addition to milk Cows gave India female calves to replace old cows and male calves that grew up to be plouughing ngine. where will Indian agriculture be, I guess they still are integral part of Rural life which is about 70% of India. Rural folks live, work and largely feed the urban dwellers who seem to have most of the economic dividend. mother nature has given us what we need to live on out beutiful planet Earth. All consuming humans will never be wiser than mother nature, so be humble and grateful and be less toxic to our climate...

Anyway, scientis must non-political and generae human knowledge objectively to answer questions of the day. I grew up on a marginal village farm and worked mostly with animal, plant, soil & environmental scientists...stand back and look at the big picture...always