“Dairy is the first domino” – Dotsie Bausch.

Dear Climate Healers Family,

Dairy, the first domino, is toppling over. In India, the largest dairy producer and one of the largest beef exporters in the world, there was considerable turmoil around the Youtube ban of “Maa Ka Doodh” (Mother’s Milk), the award-winning 2023 documentary that exposed the systemic, widespread cruelty in the Indian dairy industry.

YouTube deleted the entire Maa Ka Doodh channel on the pretext that it violated Youtube’s policies on spam, deceptive practices, and scams. That pretext is so flimsy that YouTube had to reinstate the channel and apologize to the producers. From now on, we will only be publishing the UnchainedTV link for Maa Ka Doodh as that is one source that is not going to be censored.

The backstory is revealing. The Youtube ban occurred a few hours after the Jabalpur police arrested three young activists and tore down the posters that they had erected around the city proclaiming that “Milk is NOT Vegetarian”. The posters invited people to watch “Maa Ka Doodh” and find out for themselves.

Jabalpur is the judicial capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh in India and the third largest city in the state. Madhya Pradesh is one of the largest dairy producing states in the country and sensitivities around milk run high in the state, especially around this NOT Vegetarian labeling.

The $500 Billion trade deal between the US and India stalled after India insisted on labelling imports of US dairy products as “NOT Vegetarian” on the grounds that dairy cows in the US are routinely fed bone meal and other animal products, The reasoning goes that American cows eat animal products, and therefore, their milk is not Vegetarian.

After the 50% tariffs that President Trump imposed on India following the collapse of the trade talks, the political class in India is very sensitive to all milk being labeled as NOT Vegetarian.

In India, most cows are not fed animal products, even though Western carcass rendering practices are slowly creeping into the Indian dairy industry as well. Nevertheless, is Indian dairy milk truly Vegetarian?

Milk is the lactation secretion of a mammal mother, who is definitely an animal, not a vegetable. Even in the Indian dairy industry, this mammal mother is forcibly impregnated, her baby is taken away from her at birth, and she is ultimately killed when she is no longer able to produce milk for human consumption. We can verify this is happening to both cows and buffaloes in India by checking their age/gender demographics.

India has one of the highest concentrations of Vegetarians who consume dairy products in the world. If the 300 million Vegetarians in India decide to go Vegan because they now consider milk to be NOT Vegetarian, that would certainly topple dairy, the first domino and with it, the entire animal agriculture industry.

Most Indian Vegetarians are aware of the cruelty in the industry they support, but many can’t seem to give up their daily consumption of chai, coffee, ghee or yoghurt. It is important that we come up with best practices to help people get over these addictive dependencies so that we can quickly topple this first domino.

More on this in the next newsletter.

Join us at V-COP23

Please join us in Toronto for the Vegan Convergence Of the Peoples #23 (V-COP23) on Nov 1-2 to help shape and implement our system design plan for Planet B. The theme for V-COP23 is offered by our co-host, Plant Based Treaty: Redirect, Relinquish, Restore::

Redirect our focus from fixing Planet A to building Planet B.
Relinquish the excess resources we have taken from the planet.
Restore the life-support systems of the planet with the relinquished resources.

Please be there and help make history.

With much love,