Pythagoras (6th century B.C.)

Jitendra, 7 years old

Since the last issue we have seen the passing away of some of our beloved friends. Jitendra, Agni and Partha lived at the ISCOWP farm since they were a few months old. They recently passed from our company here at the farm, the place of their childhood. Unique to most cows, they lived and died a protected life free of all the horrors an average cow must endure.

Jitendra (top photo) was seven years old, Agni (bottom photo) was eight, and Partha (page 6) was six years old. You can read about them beginning on page 6. By facilitating their journey through life, we have learned more about tolerance, patience and love, which they so nicely embody. We pray for them and ask you to think of them in your prayers.

Agni, 8 years old

Inside This Issue

Letters:   Cow Dung a Good Nuclear Shield? - SARS: The Rise of a Virus - Famous Krishna - A short Way From the Slaughterhouse to the Holocaust -

ISCOWP Update

In Memory of Oxen

Mad Cow Disease Again

Carbonaro & Primavera

Mans Best Friend

From: Krsna-krpa (das) SDG (BI) (Alachua, FL - USA) <Krsna-krpa.SDG@pamho.net>

To: ISCOWP (Balabhadra Dasa & Chaya Dasi - USA) <ISCOWP@pamho.net>

Subject: Cow dung a good nuclear shield?

Date: Thursday, January 02, 2003 11:20 AM

The following article is from THE TIMES OF INDIA, THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2003

and is at:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?art_id=33105252

-------------------------------------------------

Cow dung a good nuclear shield?

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 02, 2003 01:09:18 AM ]

LUCKNOW: Does cow dung actually has anti-radioactive properties? Scientists may scoff at the question but the `gau-bhaktas' led by chairman of the UP Gau Seva Ayog Radhe Shyam Gupta firmly believe that houses painted by cow dung could be the safest shelters in the event of a nuclear strike.

Interestingly, now the state government has also joined the fray. In an attempt to take the controversy to its logical conclusion, it has decided to have the theory scientifically validated. According to the minister for animal husbandry Laxmi Kant Bajpai, the department was seeking scientific scrutiny of the claims made by the Ayog chairman. Samples of cow dung based distemper developed at the Kanpur Goshala Society at Panki will be forwarded to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre for necessary tests, he disclosed to the reporter on Thursday.

"There is enough traditional evidence to support the theory, but we are looking for scientific clearance of these claims as well," he said.

The society has developed the distemper in five earthy colors (with 30 per cent dung content) and even tiles using the same as its base.

"At the moment, the production capacity is limited, but once the claim is scientifically validated we will step it up to meet the requirement," says an optimistic general secretary of the society Purushottam Toshniwal who already anticipates a bumper demand from all over the country.

Toshniwal dismisses all doubts over the issue summarily and claims to have approached top nuclear scientists for intervention in past. "I had been wanting to set the controversy at rest for long but as BARC does not test samples sent by non-governmental bodies, I had little options," he says. Finally he requested the government to be a party and approach the institute and the minister concerned has already given green signal to the proposal, he told the Times News Network.

The colours, he claimed were aesthetically pleasing and could match the quality of the best brands available in the market. The more popular colours on the shelf at the moment were a chic vermilion - a mix of turmeric and lime as colourant, dark maroon and deep olive, he informed. The catchword he uses to tout his ware perfect `coat' of protection ethnic, appealing and economical.

From: "Urmila (dd) ACBSP (ISKCON School NC - USA)" <Urmila.ACBSP@pamho.net>

To: "Free Forum (Announcements)" <Free.Forum@pamho.net>

Subject: SARS and animal slaughter

Date: Monday, April 28, 2003 3:50 PM

from the New York Times:

THE RISE OF A VIRUS

From China's Provinces, a Crafty Germ Spreads

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

HUNDE, China - An hour south of Guangzhou, the Dongyuan animal market presents endless opportunities for an emerging germ. In hundreds of cramped stalls that stink of blood and guts, wholesale food vendors tend to veritable zoos that will grace Guangdong Province's tables: snakes, chickens, cats, turtles, badgers and frogs. And, in summer, sometimes rats, too.

They are all stacked in cages one on top of another which in turn serve as seats, card tables and dining quarters for the poor migrants who work there. On a recent morning, near stall 17, there were beheaded snakes, disemboweled frogs and feathers flying as a half-alive headless bird was plunked into a basket.

If you were a corona virus, like the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, it would be easy to move from animals to humans in the kitchens and food stalls of Guangdong, a province notorious for exotic cuisine prepared with freshly killed beasts.

Indeed, preliminary studies of early SARS victims here in Guangdong have found that an unusually high percentage were in the catering profession - a tantalizing clue, perhaps, to how a germ that genetically most resembles chicken and rodent viruses has gained the ability to infect thousands of humans.

One of the earliest cases, last December, was a seller of snakes and birds here who died at Shunde's First People's Hospital of severe pneumonia. His wife and several members of the hospital staff contracted it as well, setting off an outbreak that now sounds eerily familiar.

"Oh yes, I heard that a guy here died of that pneumonia," said Li Songyu, a 40-year-old wearing a neat tan blouse, as she filleted live frogs and dumped them into a basket. "But it is very safe and sanitary now."

Around the same time in December, Huang Xinchu, a chef, was admitted to the Heyuan People's Hospital, 100 miles to the north, ultimately infecting eight doctors there. On Jan. 2, another desperately ill chef was hospitalized in the city of Zhongshan, south of Shunde, setting off an outbreak.

But if such early outbreaks present scientific hints about the origin of SARS,they also provide painful political lessons in how a disease that has spread worldwide could have been prevented.

From: "Deenanath (das) LOK (Vrindavan - IN)" <Deenanath.LOK@pamho.net>

To: "Padayatra Germany" <Padayatra.Germany@pamho.net>; "Padayatra Worldwide" <Padayatra.Worldwide@pamho.net>; "Balarama LOK" <Balarama.LOK@pamho.net>; "ISCOWP (Balabhadra Dasa & Chaya Dasi - USA)" <ISCOWP@pamho.net>; "Jaya Vijaya" <jayavijaya@hotmail.com>; "Sanaka Sanatana (das) LOK (TP Pandarpur - IN)" <Sanaka.Sanatana.LOK@pamho.net>

Subject:

Date: Saturday, July 26, 2003 1:50 AM

This is a recent photo of the famous Padayatra Indian bull, Krishna.

As many of you know, he has retired in Vrindavan at the Food for Life Go-sadan, a home for sick, injured, and old cows and bulls. He is maintained by the the tender care of Kurma-rupa das (ACBSP) and the kind financial contribution of Radhapati das(ACBSP).

He is thoroughly enjoying his retirement years as undisputed king of the Go-sadan. He had a temper when he arrived, however recently he got a steady girlfriend and has calmed down a lot. He no longer needs to be tied up and wanders freely in the Go-sadan.

We dressed him up recently to take some photos for next years FFLV calendar, which will be dedicated to the theme of cows.

For more information about the FFL Go-sadan, please go to:

www.careforcows.org

Your servant,

Deenanath dasa

FFL Vrindavan

From: "Charles Patterson"

<eternaltr@earthlink.net>

To: <iscowp@earthlink.net>

Subject: my book

Date: Monday, July 21, 2003 7:34 PM

"This book is going to change the world."--Albert Kaplan

INTERNATIONAL INTEREST GROWING

ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

by Charles Patterson, Ph.D.

Lantern Books, New York, 2002

ISBN: 1-930051-99-9

http://www.EternalTreblinka.com & http://www.powerfulbook.com

"Charles Patterson's book will go a long way towards righting the terrible wrongs that human beings throughout history have perpetrated on non-human animals. I urge you to read Eternal Treblinka and think deeply about its important message."--Dr. Jane Goodall

"The Great Divide: Animals and the Holocaust"--a feature article by Charles Patterson based on his book Eternal Treblinka--is in the current May/June issue of Tikkun Magazine:http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0305/article/030526a.html

To contact the author, write to him at eternaltr@earthlink.net

******************************************

Review of Un’eterna Treblinka in La Stampa

June 9, 2003 [translated from Italian]

The Original Idea of an American Shoah Scholar: Many Nazi leaders came from the food industry

It’s a Short Way from the Slaughterhouse to the Holocaust

by Jaopo Iacoboni

Programmed slaughter of calves and other animals viewed as the theoretical and historical basis for the extermination of the Jews. It might just be a coincidence but: Rudolf Hoss, the commander of Auschwitz, owned a butcher shop; Willi Mentz, one of the most ferocious guards at Treblinka, milked cows for a living; Kurt Franz, the last commander at Treblinka, was a butcher; Karl Frenzel, who fueled the ovens first at Hadamar and then at Sobibor, was a butcher; Heinrich Himmler, the designer of the Shoah, conducted eugenic testing on his chicken farm. As Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno put it: “Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.” Someone has taken Adorno seriously.

The person is Charles Patterson, professor at Columbia University of New York and the International School of Holocaust Studies of Jerusalem. His thesis is as simple as it is provocative considering the equation it is based on and, paradoxically, considering the results it could lead to, i.e., that the early 19th century American slaughterhouses--programmed machines to kill cows, calves, and pigs for the food industry--is the theoretical and historical precursor--and perhaps symbol--of the Shoah.

The fact that one species (human) considers itself the “owner” of another (nonhuman) is the theoretical and practical basis for considering one race superior to another. In Patterson’s words: “[This book] examines how in modern times the industrialized killing of human and nonhuman animals is connected and how American eugenics and automated slaughterhouses crossed the Atlantic and found fertile terrain in Nazi Germany.”

The question is: Can animal advocacy go so far as to claim that the massacre of the animals [in the slaughterhouses] is the model for the extermination of the Jews [in the gas chambers]? Is comparing the killing of a person to that of an animal even conceivable? Do those who think it is, say so out of the irresistible lure of the politically incorrect and the devastating will to reverse everything, even logic?

To answer these questions, you must read this carefully documented book, which is anything but anti-Semitic--actually being full of citations fromTorah and Talmud. The title, Un’eterna Treblinka (and subtitle The Massacre of the Animals and the Holocaust), Editori Riuniti, 321 pp., € 16) reflects the contents and spirit of a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Letter Writer.” The letter writer of the story observes: “They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”

Can this assumption be proved? Patterson points out that many high-placed Nazis were trained in the food industry. He recalls that the American Hitler admired the most, Henry Ford, got the idea for the assembly line from a visit to a slaughterhouse. He documents how the bureaucratic precision of certain places of evil such as Treblinka was achieved by using as models the efficient assembly lines devised for the mass killing of calves. He goes on to show how numerous survivors of the Shoah, having developed an “x-ray vision” for the suffering in others, have become environmental or animal advocates. And he dedicates a long excursus to Singer’s crucial suggestion that the aversion toward slaughter lies at the basis of a new, gentler, and more generalized coexistence.

Genesis tells us that “God gave man dominion over every living creature that crawls upon the earth” (and some environmentalists are convinced that these “fatal words” are responsible for the destruction wrought by Western civilization). But the Torah also says that animals must rest on the Sabbath, and in Isaiah we find the words “He who kills an ox is like he who kills a man.”

From: "Hridayananda Dasa Goswami" <Hridayananda.Dasa.Goswami@pamho.net>

To: "GBC Discussions" <GBC.Discussions@pamho.net>

Cc: <allenrosina@earthlink.net>; <ARKTANDRIA@aol.com>; <jlevitt4@aol.com>

Subject: Fwd: FW: good editorial

Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 9:31 AM

Interesting article

Los Angeles Times

April 21, 2003

COMMENTARY

Animals Suffer a Perpetual 'Holocaust' By Stephen R. Dujack, Stephen R. Dujack is the editor of an environmental magazine in Washington and a writer.

Isaac Bashevis Singer fled Nazi Europe in 1935 and came to this country. He married my grandmother, who had escaped from Hitler's Germany in 1940. He went on to become a lauded author and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. His family -- those who stayed behind -- were killed in the concentration camps.

My grandfather was also a principled vegetarian. He was one of the first to equate the wholesale slaughter of humans to what we perpetrate against animals every day in slaughterhouses. He realized that the systems of oppression and murder that had been used in the Holocaust were the systems being used to confine, oppress and slaughter animals. He attributed to a character in one of his books something he believed in himself: "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis. For [them], it is an eternal Treblinka."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has come under fire from the Anti-Defamation League for a campaign highlighting my grandfather's ideas as well as writings from others -- including German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, who was forced into exile by the Nazis, and Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, who was imprisoned in Dachau -- that compare the suffering of Holocaust victims with that of farmed animals. The ADL claims that PETA is exploiting the Holocaust for publicity. The campaign has sparked debate and controversy in the Jewish community, but my grandfather would have been proud of PETA's bold campaign.

The Holocaust happened because ordinary people chose to ignore the extraordinary oppression and abuse being inflicted on innocents by the Nazis. Millions of people went about their daily lives, knowingly turning a blind eye to the suffering of those they didn't relate to, those who were deemed "unworthy of life."

My grandfather often said that this mind-set, whether it manifested itself as the oppression of animals or of people, exemplified the most hideous and dangerous of all racist principles. As Adorno said, "Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: They're only animals."

My grandfather was a gentle man who always extended a compassionate hand to those who could not speak for themselves. He had birds as pets, but he always left their cages open because he couldn't bear to see any being behind bars. They used to fly out one window and in another of his apartment. When asked why he was a vegetarian, he'd reply, "I'm a vegetarian for health reasons: the health of the chickens." Because of him, I am also now a vegetarian.

Because of my family's history and the gentle guiding force of my grandfather, I learned the sad lessons of prejudice and ignorance and the ways to fight them. I learned that to remember the horrors of the past is not enough -- we must apply what we've learned and say with conviction,

"Never again." But when we say it, we must mean never again shall we allow this to happen to anyone, for any reason.

Like the victims of the Holocaust, animals are rounded up, trucked hundreds of miles to the kill floor and slaughtered. Comparisons to the Holocaust are not only appropriate but inescapable because, whether we wish to admit it or not, cows, chickens, pigs and turkeys are as capable of feeling loneliness, fear, pain, joy and affection as we are. To those who defend the modern-day holocaust on animals by saying that animals are slaughtered for food and give us sustenance, I ask: If the victims of the Holocaust had been eaten, would that have justified the abuse and murder? Did the fact that lampshades, soaps and other "useful" products were made from their bodies excuse the Holocaust? No. Pain is pain.

My grandfather wrote, "As long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a la Hitler.... There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is."

We all have the power to stop suffering and misery every time we sit down to eat.

Back To Index

May 27, 2003

We began a fundraiser, in July 2002, to build an equipment and hay storage building. We have already bought all the tin for the roof. That leaves $12,000 for the rest of the building. We have decided to remove the old farmhouse that is at the very beginning of the property and put the new building there. The foundation of the old farmhouse is not good and the building is not considered worth fixing. This old house was also a boy’s ashram in the old days of ISKCON. Apparently child abuse took place in this building. This is another reason to destroy it and build anew on top of the site.

Bhisma das removing roof of old farmhouse.

The first step is to build shelves in the new barn where there is a designated space for a workshop. Then all the tools that are being stored in the old farmhouse can be moved in an organized way to the new barn. Bhisma das is now building the shelves and moving the tools. Then when that is done the siding on the old building will be removed since it is in good condition and can be used on other constructions. We will then destroy the building. Finally, John Hart our bulldozer contractor will remove the large cut stones that are the foundation of the building (we want to use them for other projects) and clear the area by filling in the hole. The area will then be cleared for the 70’ by 40’ storage building and its construction in August. Frank, who built the new barn, will be the main worker on site and Balabhadra and Bhisma will be helpers.

July 6, 2003

The preliminary actions needed to begin construction on the storage building, as reported in the last monthly letter, have been completed.

There were more stones then we had realized and now we have Govardhan Hill in our yard. These stones are valuable and if we had bought them we would have spent a few thousand dollars. The stones will be used to build a greenhouse so we can start our garden earlier and grow greens during the winter. The rest of the stones will be used to build a patio and rock garden of herbs and flowers in the front of the house.

The Limestone volunteer fire department, headed by John Hart, watch the old house of abuse being burnt to the ground.

We removed the building by burning it down. We are very thankful for the volunteer help of Bhisma das and Bhakta Dave Huntt in salvaging materials from the building and preparing the building for burning.

August 15, 2003

Construction of the storage building has begun. We also want to put a hospital section in this building for the cows so we can hoist the cows into a standing position in cases of injured limbs, clean the stall, etc.

We have planted asparagus, strawberries, 4 apple trees and 1 peach tree, Yukon Gold potatoes, 4 types of paste tomatoes, 2 types of strawberries; ever-bearing, June bearing, 4 types of peppers: bell, sweet, pimento, Anaheim, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, small mixture of cabbages, melons, comfrey, oregano, sage, rice, and flowers. The area that we had for the garden last year (1/4 acre) is now filled and we have opened up a new area for additional planting. In that area we planted 2 types of lettuce, 2 types of beets, 2 types of bush beans, 2 types of kale, cilantro, zucchini, 2 types of sunflowers, 2 types of winter squash, urd dahl, garbanzo beans, zinnias, straw flowers, and calendula.

Gour Govinda and Sita helped plant much of the garden during their visit.

We are now harvesting potatoes, zucchini, oregano, comfrey, and bitter melon.

The month of August has brought cool weather and lots of rain. Some of the plants in the garden are not doing well because of the uncharacteristic weather conditions. We are praying that the weather gets sunny and hot soon.

Lula and Aly visited Lulu's adopted cow.

Here they are getting to know her better and grooming her.

Each spring we try to upgrade our perimeter fencing. This spring we rebuilt a half-mile fence line from our driveway out to the neighbor’s property. This consisted of approximately 150 locusts posts and four strands of wire.

There are several places which need little bridges so that we can cross over the creek to access firewood on the forested side of the property. Norman, a local handyman, has built the first bridge of railroad ties. We have 3 or 4 other bridges planned. Norman also built the fences this spring.

Back To Index

Jitendra, one of our oxen, was saved from the slaughterhouse about 6 years ago as a group effort of the New Vrndavana cow department and Mr. Kamalesh Shah and family. Since his rescue from slaughter, Jitendra has lived a wonderful life on our farm along with 25 other cows and oxen. He and his friends have access to 75 acres of pasture during the spring, summer and fall and a nice pole barn to shelter them in the winter and the heat of summer days. Even in the winter the cows are able to move freely from the barn to the pastures for exercise, which is different from most cold climate barn setups.

 The morning after Balabhadra arrived home from India he saw Jitendra below the barn on the other side of the fence and went to investigate. There was Jitendra with his leg stretched out from his body and caught in the fence. Although the fence had been replaced with high tensile wire and was not barbed wire, Jitendra's foot was badly cut. Balabhadra cut Jitendra out of the fence and Jitendra lay on the ground unable to use his badly cut leg.

After cleaning his wound, the opinion of most was to let him lay there and perhaps he would heal, get up and walk away. Since he weighed about 2000 pounds, it would take some heavy equipment to move him. The ground had thawed which would make it difficult for such equipment to operate without getting stuck. Since we live in West Virginia which is very hilly, moving him back to the barn, which is uphill, would be quite a feat and also very traumatizing for him. We tried to make him comfortable with hay to sit upon and food and water to drink. But he stopped eating almost from the beginning. Each day he struggled to get up, but the leg had no feeling or strength. So we waited a few days, praying he would get better. But every time we checked on him he was not eating. He was also trying to move and therefore slipping down hill.

Balabhadra decided to move him. He first built him a sled to put him on so that he could be pulled uphill. To build the sled took a day since we had to be sure it would be strong enough and comfortable enough to cause the least amount of trauma and stress. When that was completed we went to check on Jitendra the follow­ing morning. The weather had gotten cold again and we wanted to move him in the early morning while the ground was still hard and before it warmed up and began to thaw so the tractor would not get stuck and make things even worse. Jitendra had managed to get himself into a gully and was lying on his side in the gully’s freezing cold water.

I stayed with him chanting the Hare Krsna mantra and holding his head in my arms trying to calm him. I felt so powerless since I seemed not able to reach his consciousness. In the meantime Phil, a local employee of the temple, and a few devotees from the temple had been called to come and help us move Jitendra to the barn where he would be safer and more comfortable.

First we maneuvered the sled under him and rolled him on to it and then pulled him out with the tractor. He was so big and heavy and it took all of us with all our strength to move

him. Then ahead was the uphill climb to the barn, a distance of about 300 yards. Phil had built a pulley system that he attached to the tractor and the sled. Balabhadra sat with Jitendra on the sled and Phil began to drive the tractor uphill.

I ran back to the house in the attempt to get some blankets for Jitendra as he was shivering. But I could hardly move very fast as there were still high drifts of snow in some areas and I was exhausted as it was. When I succeeded in getting the blankets and made it back to the pasture, the sled was half way up to the barnyard. I prayed that the sled would hold together as the barnyard was full of mud due to the previous cold weather and subsequent warming temperatures.

All the cows and oxen were all around Balabhadra and Jitendra. They followed Jitendra and Balabhadra up to the top of the hill where the barn is located. When Jitendra was down on the other side of the fence, they would come to the fence and moo and fuss, going back and forth along the fence line.

Then we maneuvered the tractor and pulled him into the manger part of the barn again using the pulley system attached to the rafters of the barn. We made a bed of hay and rolled Jitendra off the sled onto the hay. At this point, 4 hours later, we were all exhausted. Jitendra did not look well as the trip was traumatic for him. For Jitendra, such a big ox, to be unable to walk was very frightening for him. The other cows and oxen calmed down the minute we got Jitendra in the manger. Balabhadra kept saying to me how it was so amazing how they calmed down, as if they knew we were doing all we could for Jitendra and he was be­ing taken care of.

We got a tape recorder that played Prabhupada chanting 24 hours a day and we played that in the barn continuously the whole time Jitendra was with us. From the beginning, the prognosis was not good. He seemed to know that, as he did not want to eat and drink. We chanted to him and stayed with him as much as we could for 10 days before he passed away. He was happier in the barn. The cows would visit him and it even seemed sometimes that we disturbed him when we came to visit as he was listening to Srila Prabhupada chanting and he was calm.

It was so difficult to not be able to reverse his fate. But at the same time he had 10 days to meditate on transcendental sound vibra­tions and prepare for death. It was comforting to know that he was not terrified as he was when he was in the gulley. We knew that it would take a miracle to change his fate, so the whole purpose in mov­ing him was to give his soul the opportunity to enter into the next life peace­fully and hopefully focused on Lord Krsna.

Although his death was glorious and his life exceptional, I would be untruthful to say that his fate did not leave us with sadness and a great sense of loss. This experience makes me wonder, is cow protection just as much for us humans as it is for the cows? Do we not benefit by being around these great souls and helping them on their journey? Do we not have the chance to develop patience, tolerance, and humility (all qualities necessary for advancement in spiritual life) by taking care of them?

In the middle of all this Agni, one of our oxen, has been fighting with diarrhea. He has had this on and off for a few years. Last winter he began to lose weight for the first time to the point where we became worried. All the allopathic medicine we tried has done nothing to improve the situation for any length of time. We have tried homeopathy on Agni and there has been some improvement. He has now been diagnosed with Johnnes disease that is incurable as far as allopathic medicine is concerned. We are pres­ently consulting with the homeo­pathic doctor in Colorado as to his treatment and we are hoping that he will recover. Right now he is holding his own. He is eating and walking around but he is very skinny.

Agni is very important to us as he is the partner to Shyam and they are our best training team. He is a hard worker and very well behaved.

May 27, 2003

Agni is still suffering from what the allopathic vets say is the fatal Johnes disease. Everything we have tried has had no long-term effect. We have just discovered the book “Natural Cattle Care” by Pat Coleby.” In this book Johnes disease is mentioned and the author describes how he cured some of his animals who had the disease. We are now just beginning that treatment and we will let you know how Agni’s health progresses. The treatment consists of large doses of Vitamins C, B1, B12, B15, and a standard supplement of amino acids and B complex vitamins. Also a diet supplemented with copper.

July 6, 2003

The sad news is that Agni (diagnosed with Johnnes disease) has left his body. We tried everything that we could but nothing accomplished any real benefit: allopath, homeopathy, ayurvedic herbs, and home remedies. The homeopathic doctor tried different medicines but none of them worked. The allopathic doctors considered it a fatal disease and incurable. A few weeks before Agni left his body, I discovered a book on our shelves “The Natural Treatment of Cattle” by Pat Coleby that described how the author cured Johnnes disease. We started following the author’s recommendations and his stool started to improve for the first time, but it was too late. (Johnnes disease is a wasting disease characterized by continual diarrhea.) Apparently the disease causes the stomach lining to scar and the animal can’t get their proper nutrient intake. Preventative actions can be taken as making sure the feed is of good quality and the pastures contain the proper level of nutrients.

We will now be getting different and better feed and replenishing our fields by applying lime and rock phosphate in the fall. We have been spreading manure from the barn onto the pastures but apparently that may not be enough. We have to get a soil test to know the true content of the soil.

One day Balabhadra and Akarsini found Agni collapsed in the barnyard, his head facing downward. Up until this point he remained always in the herd maintaining his position in the herd. He was always eating but he always had diarrhea and slowly was wasting away as the allopathic doctors said he would. The next day the temple commander (Dristyadhumna) brought a few boys from the temple, Phil came with his pulley system and with Balabhadra, Bhisma and Lakshmi they all moved Agni up into the barn by using the sled and pulley. It was the same way we moved Jitendra and we placed Agni in the same quiet place in the barn. A tape of Prabhupada chanting the Hare Krsna Mantra was played 24 hours a day. We all visited him at different times of the day and within 5 days he was gone from his body. He was just too weak to eat, to live. The evening of his leaving there was a brief storm with a ferocious wind that knocked down a few trees. At the time I was with Mela in the woods. Some branches fell barely missing us by inches. I felt like there was a person in the wind, that someone was passing by or being pulled away. A few hours later there appeared a rainbow. We could see the entire arch that we had never seen here before. The next morning Agni was not in his body.

A young Agni & Shyam. Now Shyam will need a new partner.

Also recently Partha was diagnosed with Bovine Leukemia. On my daily afternoon walk with Mela, I noticed Partha sitting alone in the barn breathing heavily. There seemed to be no apparent harm to his body so I gave him some water to drink and decided to check on him later.

Lakshmi checked on him that evening and he had moved into a muddy part of the barnyard and was stuck in the mud. She dug out the mud around him and he pulled himself out so hard that he rolled over into a lower part of the barnyard. She made him as comfortable as possible.

I checked on him at 1:30 at night and he had moved again and was stuck up to his back hips in mud. I also dug out the mud around him but he could not move. Balabhadra gets back from work at 3:30 AM and I waited on the road for him to solicit his help as soon as possible. In the meantime Partha pulled himself out and rolled over in a bad position. We woke Bhisma and Lakshmi and together we were able to roll him into a better position. But by now we knew we had to move him up into the barn to stop him from getting into dangerous positions. He just seemed unable to move his back legs fully.

We once again called Dristyadhumna and crew, and Phil and moved Partha as we moved Jitendra and Agni. The vet came that day and diagnosed him with Bovine Leukemia. The vet said that his spine was swollen and the disease was already progressed. Only a few days before did we noticed he was a little wobbly on his feet, but he seemed perfectly fine before that time. The vet gave us some steroids to give him that he said might be able to help him stand up. We gave him steroids and for about 2 weeks he was able to stand up and walk a little. But just recently he has not been able to stand and just today he can’t sit up.

When the vet gave us the diagnosis he said that Bovine Leukemia is hereditary and passed down through the mother. When we took Partha there were no records on his history therefore we had no way of knowing the health possibilities. When we called the homeopathic doctor she did not think it was possible to help him since the disease was progressed.

As I usually write the monthly letter in stages, it is now 2 days later and Partha has left his body. A tape of Prabhupada chanting the Hare Krsna Maha Mantra was playing in the barn 24 hours a day and we pray that Partha was meditating on the transcendental sounds. Once again a storm came with strong winds the evening of his passing on.

Partha

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Mad Cow Disease Again

Date: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 11:59 AM

(New York Times Editorial)

Canada's Problem - and America's

May 27, 2003

By MICHAEL K. HANSEN

YONKERS

The discovery of a case of mad cow disease in Canada underlines the need for American officials to exercise much greater vigilance to prevent the emergence of this fatal brain-wasting disease in the United States. Live cattle, beef products and animal feed move relatively freely between the United States and Canada; last year the United States imported one billion pounds of beef from Canada.

Unfortunately, the federal government's defenses are full of gaps.

Mad cow disease is one of several similar fatal brain diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. They are so named because of their main effect: the infected brain eventually becomes riddled with spongelike holes. The disease is believed to be caused by a mutant protein that, when eaten, travels through the body to the brain. The effect on the victim is always the same: mental deterioration and death.

There have been 100 confirmed deaths in Britain from the human form of mad cow disease, which is thought to be caused by eating tainted beef, and the number is rising. So far the United States has been lucky. But to prevent an outbreak, a number of steps need to be taken immediately.

First, we need to screen more cattle for the disease. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture tested only 19,990 cows believed to be at risk for mad cow disease, out of a population of about 96 million. This sample is far too small to detect a problem that might be small but growing. The department should mandate the use of rapid tests, currently used in Europe, which have allowed testing of all cattle above a certain age at slaughter.

Last year European regulators tested more than 10 million cattle for mad cow disease, out of a total population of some 40 million.

The Food and Drug Administration should also ban the feeding of all animal remains to food animals. At factory farms and feed lots, cattle, hogs and chickens eat a relatively high-protein diet, and much of this protein comes from the rendered remains of other cattle, hogs or chickens.

The European Union, for example, does not allow animal remains to be fed to any food animal. (In Britain, cows are believed to have been infected by eating sheep with scrapie, which is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.) But under the F.D.A.'s current rules, cattle remains can still be fed to other animals, such as pigs and chickens, whose remains can then be fed back to cows. Even the remains of an animal known to carry a form of mad cow disease could go into rendered feed, under F.D.A. rules.

More than just meat is at risk. Materials from some of the most potentially infectious parts of a cow, including brains, eyes and spleen, sometimes end up in dietary supplements. This fact, along with recent deaths associated with use of the dietary supplement ephedra, underlines the need for Congress to require dietary supplements to prove their safety before being marketed.

Despite all these efforts, an outbreak could still occur. If it does, we might not know for some time if Americans were becoming infected with a mad-cow-like disease at an increased rate - because it is not one of the diseases doctors and hospitals must report to the Centers for Disease Control. It should be made a mandatory reportable disease.

While the government considers what it can do, what should consumers do? The size of the risk is unknown, so it's hard to say. However, some foods are clearly more risky than others.

Since the most infectious material is to be found in the brains of cows, consumers could simply avoid them. Some processed beef products, like many sausages and hot dogs, are produced using machines that scour a cow carcass for all available meat. Since they may contain central nervous system tissue, some people may want to avoid them as well. A steak, or hamburger that the butcher grinds in front of you, carries the least risk. Consumers may also want to consider organic or grass-fed beef, since these cows are not fed any animal proteins.

The bottom line is that the government should act now to protect the food supply. Delay will only allow any potential problem to get worse.

Michael K. Hansen is a senior research associate at Consumers Union.

_________________________________

Editors Note: Our opinion is that the bottom line is to become a vegetarian and encourage others to do the same.

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Carbonaro and Primavera

The Atlantic Monthly | May 2003

Carbonaro and Primavera

With gasoline prices in Cuba going up and up, it is once again an excellent time to have-and to be-an ox.

by Susan Orlean

One thing will never change: Carbonaro must always be on the right. Five years from now, ten years, even twenty, if all goes well, Carbonaro will still be on the right and Primavera on the left, the two of them yoked together, pulling a spindly plough across the loamy fields in the hills outside Cienfuegos. Oxen are like that: absolutely rigid in their habits, intractable once they have learned their ways. Even when a working pair is out of harness and is being led to water or to a fresh spot to graze, the two animals must be aligned just as they are accustomed or they will bolt, or at the very least dig in and refuse to go any farther until order is restored, each ox in its place.

Carbonaro and Primavera were not always a pair. Twenty years ago Primavera was matched up and trained with an ox named Cimarrón. They worked side by side for two decades. But Cimarrón was a glutton, and he broke into the feed one day and ate himself sick, dying happy with incurable colic. It was an enormous loss. An ox costs thousands of pesos and must be babied along until the age of two and then requires at least a year of training before he can be put to work. It is especially difficult to lose half of a working pair: You have to find a new partner who fits the temperament and strength of your animal, and above all, you have to find an ox who can work on the now vacant side. Primavera would work only on the left. He could be matched only with a partner who was used to working on the right. It was a lucky thing to find Carbonaro, a right-sider and a pretty good match in terms of size, although to this day he is a little afraid of Primavera and hangs back just a bit.

Anyway, it was a lucky thing to find an ox at all. For a while oxen had seemed part of the Cuban landscape-huge, heavy-bodied creatures, with necks rising in a lump of muscle, their gigantic heads tapering into teacup-sized muzzles; homely animals with improbably slim legs and a light tread, their whip-thin tails flicking in a kind of staccato rhythm, the rest of their being unmoving, imperturbable, still. But then cheap Soviet oil came to Cuba, and chemical fertilizers, and, most important, tractors. In fact, during the 1960s and 1970s so many tractors were being sent to Cuba that there were more than the farmers could use. Sometimes when the Agriculture Ministry called the cooperatives to announce the arrival of more tractors, no one even bothered to go to the port to pick them up. During that time hardly anyone wanted oxen. With a heavy tractor a farmer could rip through a field at five or six times the speed he could with a team. It was, or it seemed, so much more modern, and so much simpler, than dealing with the complicated politics of a flesh-and-blood team. Hardly anyone was raising or training oxen. With such a windfall of tractors, no one imagined that oxen would ever again be anything other than a quaint anachronism

Even during the time of abounding tractors Humberto Quesada preferred using Primavera and Cimarrón-and then, of course, Carbonaro-but Humberto is an independent sort of man. His grandfather was brought to Cuba as a slave and was put to work on a sugar plantation of 70,000 rich acres owned by a Massachusetts family. Humberto's father was a slave there too, and Humberto as a child worked beside him in the fields, so that he could learn how to do what he assumed he'd grow up to do. Although the Quesadas were slaves, they were mavericks. Humberto's sister Ramona, a tiny woman with tight curls and a dry laugh, married the son of white farmers down the road-a scandal at the time, but one that yielded a happy fifty-year marriage that became the warm center of the joined families. And of course Humberto went his own way. After the Castro revolution he became a truck driver, but he kept a hand in farming. It was different, because he was farming his own land, a piece of the old plantation. "The land is the foundation of everything," he told me not long ago. "If you have land, you always have something." He was encouraged to join a cooperative, but like many Cuban farmers, he chose to work alone. "There's always a lazy person in a group, so I don't like being part of groups," he explained. Moreover, he resisted each time the government tried to cut back a little bit of his land. Recently the government wanted to build a health clinic on a piece of his property, but once the official in charge of the appropriation realized that the magnificent sweet potatoes he regularly enjoyed were from Humberto's farm, he changed his mind and said Humberto should have more land, not less.

Once or twice Humberto rented a tractor, but he didn't like it. "It presses too hard," he explained. "The land ends up flattened, like a Cuban sandwich." Even when everyone else was using tractors, using chemicals, growing only sugar, Humberto ploughed with oxen; fertilized naturally, the way his father had taught him; cultivated tomatoes and corn and lettuce and beans-and sweet potatoes. Humberto never actually owned the oxen. He borrowed them from his neighbor, whose father had fought beside Humberto's father in the War of Independence.

When the Soviet money ran out, the battalions of tractors, now out of gas, rattled to a standstill, and oxen-quaint, anachronistic oxen-were once again worth their weight in gold. It was a lucky farmer who had never given them up, who still had a working team, who could still plough and plant even in the worst moments after the Soviet collapse. Luckier still was a farmer who had stuck with such crops as corn and tomatoes rather than being seduced by the money that had seemed as if it would flow forever from sugar. In such a moment a man like Humberto no longer seemed a throwback. Now in his eighties, slightly lame, wizened, Humberto is everything the new Cuban farmer needs to be: small-scale, efficient, diversified, organic-and, most important, invulnerable to the ups and downs of Cuba's gasoline economy, which once depended entirely on Soviet good will and has since come to rest precariously on Venezuelan. Most of the imported oil in Cuba these days comes from Venezuela, and because of the good relationship between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's President, the price had, until recently, been especially favorable. But Chávez was nearly overthrown in April of last year, and when he regained his footing, he suspended the shipments. Across Cuba gasoline prices rose by as much as 20 percent. It was a very good time to have an ox.

One recent morning Humberto stopped by to say hello to his sister, who lives with her extended family on another piece of the old plantation property. It was a brilliant, breezy day. Outside Ramona's little cottage a couple of chickens were worrying the dirt, and a litter of piglets were chasing around in a pile of hay. The cottage is tidy, old, and unadorned; there is something timeless about it, as if nothing here, or nearby, had changed in twenty or thirty or fifty years. And, of course, nothing much has changed in the countryside: the elemental facts, the worries over sun and water and whether the seeds have germinated and the eggs have hatched, don't ever change. In Cuba right now there is a sense of the moment, a sense that the country is on the brink of newness and change, a sense that the future is unfurling right now-but the countryside has a constancy, a permanence. And these days Humberto feels like a rich man. He said that everyone he knows is going crazy looking for oxen, and that you have to barter for them or apply to the government, and that anyone who still knows how to train a team-a skill that was of course considered obsolete when the tractors prevailed-is being offered a premium for his talents. He grinned as he said this, pantomiming the frantic gestures of a desperate man looking high and low for a trained ploughing team.

Someday, no doubt, the tractors will start up again, and the hills beyond Cienfuegos and the fields outside Havana and the meadows in Camagüey and Trinidad and Santiago de Cuba will be ploughed faster than the fastest team could dream of. Then, once again, oxen won't be golden anymore. They will be relics, curiosities. But this is their moment, just as it is Humberto's moment, when being slow and shrewd and tough is paying off.

After we'd talked awhile, Humberto got up and headed down the drive and over to his neighbor's, and a few minutes later he reappeared, leading the two oxen, who were walking side by side. He stopped in the yard near the cottage and brought the animals to a halt and stood beside them, one hand laid lightly on Primavera's neck. The oxen shuffled their feet a little and looked sidelong at the cottage, the chickens, a curtain ruffling in the breeze in Ramona's entryway. Humberto's straw hat was tipped back, and it cast a lacy shadow across his face; he leaned a little against the animal's warm gray shoulder and he smiled.

Chayadevi asked me to write something about our bullock cart. While thinking what to write, I am petting Balaram, who is patiently waiting in his stall for his daily treat. Balaram is our young ox, barely three years old. He pulls us every day with the Bullock cart to the temple.

My three sons and I are living about 2-3 km away from the main ISKCON
property, in a small place. Since we were in need of regular milk supply,
we asked the Goshalla if we could have a cow. In Spring of 2001 Balaram was given to us along with his mother Vishnupriya. Vishnupriya supplies us with about 8-9 liters of nice milk per day. We are selling 5 liters daily and still there is plenty for us.

We are sure glad to have Balaram also, more so, because, as far as possible, we grow our own Vegetables. It would be a lot of very hard work
if it were not for him. To cultivate the land, with the help of a local farmer, Balaram plows the earth along with another ox.

Prabhupada: Stick to your own place and grow your food...Rome , May 25, 1974, Morning Walk at Villa Borghese

Cows are such nice animals to have around. My boys love them a lot. Cows never complain. They do not talk and are very affectionate. They
reciprocate when you love them. On the other hand, once you beat them or mistreat them, they never forget it.
When Balaram was small, it was easy to take care of him. However, bulls do not stay small. In fact, now Balaram has outgrown his mother.

He has a lot of strength, which needs to be put to use. Ever since we’ve had our ox, we had this idea to make a bullock cart for him. Living a ways from the temple, to have a "car" would come in handy.

And we don't require motorcar. Bullock cart is sufficient. (Srila Prabhupada) Rome , May 25, 1974, Morning Walk at Villa Borghese

I wrote to many cow experts on how to make a single-animal ox-cart. After a
long time searching around, finally one Professor NS Ramaswamy, Director
CARTMAN from Bangalore sent me all the details and design of a One-Ox
Passenger Cart. The design of the yoke was adapted from Balabhadra Prabhu's book on cow Protection. Finally, with the kind donation of one devotee, we built the "Balaram Mobile".

Click on picture to enlarge

An ox is really man's best friend. Balaram pulling Hrimati with his new cart.

Prabhupada:
There is no question of transport. Little transport is required, that bullock cart. Krishna was being carried on bullock cart. There is no use of petrol. Use simply the bull.

Prabhupäda: So we shall walk? (break) …containing three passengers, wasting petrol. Similarly, hundreds and thousands and millions of cars and buses are running all over the world, simply wasting petrol.

Bhagavän: When there was the oil crisis in the United States, they were giving reports how some person would go in his car, go ten miles in a big car to buy one pack of cigarettes. Rome, May 25, 1974, Morning Walk at Villa Borghese

We take the Bullock-cart every morning to the temple. It has other uses as well. So far, we carried sand, cement, rice straw, cow feed, grass, groceries, and even our gas cylinder. Some times, we also give rides to pilgrims. Balaram loves to pull the cart. When we give him commands on where to go and when to stop, he is very obedient. We do not even have to use a stick to control him.

Being able to live in Sri Mayapur Dham is Srila Prabhupada's special mercy. I am very thankful to Him for being so kind in guiding us in this way.

My sons love Balaram a lot. He is their pet. Having your own ox is fun and having a bullock cart is very useful. From experience, I can tell you who is really man's best friend.

Hrimati dasi
please visit us at http://www.hrimati.meyerhoff.net

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