A STORY ABOUT the lives of COWS

Cows are part of the bovine family, which also includes bison and yak. That's a cow fact right there. They are curious fellows who in Hinduism are held in high regard due to their gentle nature and agricultural capabilities, and for this reason - are considered sacred. 

This gave me chance to get to know our placid, four legged wandering friends a little better while travelling across India. My conclusion is; COWS ARE COOL.

I continued shooting cows (figuratively speaking) for the following two years through several other nations, exploring how they co-exist with both us, their human overlords and in their diverse environments. The finale in the series is the nepalese HOLY COW, who came into this world with a birth defect of two extra legs on her back, thus spends her days being paraded around the Kathmandu Valley in the belief that she is godly and will bring good luck to all those who greet her.

In western society, one doesn't think so much about it - cows are just ‘there’ plodding around in fields chewing, but the truth is they play a huge role in most peoples lives. We eat them, wear them and consume muschos milky products. Cattle are responsible for more pollution that all forms of transport combined, yes because they have killer farts but that’s only partly to blame - it's the massive inefficiency in energy transfer producing feed for them that’s the real problem. Hypothetically speaking, if we were collectively able to shift our eating habits, even a little - the result for climate change could be massive. As recently stated by The Guardian - avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth.

We are all adults (well apart from children) and free to make our own decisions, however we also entitled to know the consequences of our decisions on both a micro (your body) and macro (environmental) scale - so briefly; Industrial farming is cutting evolutionary corners to speed up meat production [and maintain low production costs/street prices] which in turn is creating superbugs capable of wiping out half the human race. GULP. So factory farming ie. farming on an industrial scale (and generally supplying to supermarkets) is responsible for consumers slowly becoming immune to medical antibiotics, due to the amount they are unknowingly consuming. 

These are just some basic facts which you can learn more about in Jonathan Safran Foer's EATING ANIMALS, a book that enlightened me (as an infamous meat eater) and changed my eating habits - for good. We are the consumers and we have to power to create change, collectively. And if you are a new parent and feed your children meat - please do read the book, the habits of future generations will sculpt the planets future - Jonathan began researching the topic after the birth of this son and felt compelled to wrote a book based on his discoveries.

So, this series is a tribute and thanks to our bovine buddies who generally seem to get media attention for all the wrong reasons. Lets raise a glass of almond milk to that - CHEERS!

Other nations included in the series;
England, Swaziland, Namibia, France, Georgia, Mongolia & Nepal (the holy cow).

Learn about Spherical Cows