How To Live A Cruelty Free Lifestyle In India Without Depriving Yourself Of The Good Things!

Living a cruelty free life does not always mean that you should become a vegan or give up good things. Just buy your products responsibly, from sources that are reliable. 

I have been interested in a sustainable, cruelty-free lifestyle long enough for me to be convinced that it is more than a passing fad. What started as idle curiosity turned rapidly into horror when I came across articles/initiatives that exposed the atrocities that go on silently around us. One was a Yourstory expose on the nightmarish practices of the dairy farming in India. The other was the Freagle project that focuses on rescuing and rehabilitating beagles extensively used in laboratory testing and then euthanized.

Both of these were happening right here, in India. Not somewhere halfway around the world like the sweatshops of China or Bangladesh or the refugees in the middle-east. I think that, to me, was what whipped the rose-coloured glasses right off my face.

It wasn’t.

We stopped consuming all ‘non-essential’ dairy products right away; non-essential to us meant all the products we could live without. This list included butter, ghee, cheese, paneer, khoya, and – we thought – milk. We stopped getting our usual packet of Nandini milk at once and tried to switch to green tea. However, even after a month, our caffeine cravings did not go away. We started cheating by having “just one coffee” at cafes or in the office cafeteria. Vegan alternatives to milk that were available locally or online were made of soy, peanuts, or almonds, but they were far too expensive for us to try on a regular basis. In our hearts, we knew this was not a change we could hold onto.

But waking up to a milk-free, and therefore, coffee-less morning every day ensured that I was constantly reading more on the subject. The more I read, the more I realized that my problem was not fundamentally with consuming animal products or eating meat. Feeling sorry for eating an animal is the adult version of feeling sorry for the deer that’s pounced upon by the cheetah. But what about the cheetah? Nature designed it as a carnivore and this is its only way of sustenance. It’s how the food chain works.

So what really was disturbing me? I asked myself – if I had a cow in my backyard who I looked after lovingly every day, would it bother me to take her milk, whatever is left over after her calf feeds? The answer was no. Would it bother me if the cow belonged to someone else, who treated her right, took care of her, and did not use her as a milk machine? The answer, again, was no.

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That is when I realized that the mass-production of dairy, meat, and other animal products and the evil machinery that such industries run on was what was really disturbing me. This was a turning point in my journey.

In pursuit of a cruelty free lifestyle

My focus turned then to what constitutes cruelty and the definition that made the most sense was this: preventing an animal from leading a life that is not as close as possible to what nature intended is cruelty. The deer, up until the moment the cheetah springs on her, has led a normal life in her natural habitat. A cow grazing freely on grass and nursing her young is leading a normal domesticated life, even if she is being milked.

I do not think that the entire world turning vegetarian is a sustainable – or even a necessary – option. (Here is why). Free range farming and quick, painless slaughtering seem to me perfectly acceptable solutions. The problem today is the shocking increase in the careless and cruel mass-production of meat because of increasing consumption.

When I was in school, my non-vegetarian friends used to bring fish or meat for lunch once or twice a week – it was a special treat, a little luxury, and of course, an extra dose of protein. In fact, I remember just one classmate, the son of a very famous and successful cardiologist, bringing chicken fry and parottas for lunch every day, rousing amazement and envy in the others. Fast-forward to today, when meat consumption has become extremely high in India (the trends are less easy to spot in the West). I have deliberately referred to a 2013 article here so as to avoid any bias emanating from the recent ‘beef ban’ crisis.

Cruelty free farming practices is a novel concept for most of the world, with only Australia, New Zealand, and UK having made any kind of progress on this front. I found Compassion In World Farming to be a very enlightening and balanced source of information and action on the subject. This is an organization that was founded in 1967 by Peter and Anna Roberts, British farmers who became disturbed by the increasing disconnect between modern farming practices and the well-being of farm animals. According to their website, this is their goal:

“By working in partnership with inspirational supporters, progressive policy makers, and visionary companies, we are mobilizing a movement for far reaching change in our farming that can feed the world and will improve the quality of life for billions of farm animals worldwide.”

It is one that I agree with and one which has spurred me to choose free range, cruelty free products in my everyday life.

From cosmetics to household cleaning products, cruelty is built into practically every lifestyle product we use today. While I have not managed to replace all of these,  I am constantly researching alternatives. Here is a list I have compiled based on my experience so far.

Milk

we have switched to buying Europaea free range, grass fed farm milk, available online on Amazon and Bigbasket, and offline at Foodhall in VR Mall. We also like the fact that it is associated with the sustainability farming program Origin Green and takes measures towards sustainable farming practices. As this is a product imported from Ireland, it costs Rs.115/litre as opposed to about Rs.40/litre for Nandini.

Some more alternatives that seem to be available in Bangalore include the following. Please note that I have not tried these yet.

• Vrindavan milk – I like their principle of ahimsa milk. According to their FAQs section,

Our cows are treated with love and care. We don’t stress them to produce more milk. We also maintain our cows even after their milking years are over to avoid cow slaughtering.

• Indus milk – They again mention that their desi zebu cows are free-grazing and the calves are allowed to feed first before milking happens.
• The Right Moo – Free-range cows, although foreign breeds, and fed on organic grass.

Cosmetics

Apart from a few expensive niche brands, most cosmetics brands available in India have parent companies that test on animals somewhere in the world. Don’t be fooled by their corporate websites that say they are “against animal testing” or “we do not test our products on animals”. This could mean – as it does in a heart-breakingly large number of cases – that they buy animal test reports from other agencies (essentially outsourcing this bit) or test the individual ingredients (not the ‘products’) on animals.

Look for the leaping bunny logo on the products or an explicit disclaimer that they do not test on animals on the product label before you buy. Brands I have used and would recommend include:

• Lotus herbals
• Biotique
• Cholayil pharmaceuticals (Medimix and Cuticura are their most famous brands)
• Himalaya
• Vicco (I swear by their toothpaste – I’ve been using it for years!)
• Plum Goodness (I’ve been using their day/night creams for over a year and they are fantastic. Not only cruelty-free, but also free of SLEs, parabens, and the like).
• Arvind Laboratories (good old Eyetex and Dazzler, which have been around for years. I wrote to their corporate office and they have written back confirming that neither their products nor the ingredients are tested on animals.)

Floor cleaner

We switched to Gou Ganga about a year ago and have never looked at any other cleaner since. The product cleans and deodorizes our balcony (where our dogs pee, let me add) like a breeze.

Washing powder

I have switched to natural soap nuts for my washing machine instead of using detergents that not only maybe tested on animals but which are also harmful to the environment. I was initially skeptical about whether these would get rid of the used smell on the clothes and boy, they have worked wonders! Highly recommended as they are also very, very cheap.

Here are some more online sources that sell chemical-free, cruelty-free, sustainable home and personal care products. Please research each before buying as I have not tried them out. For a list of brands that DO test on animals, see here.

• Krya.in
• Rusticart.in
• A2Naturals.in

A vision for 2017

The more obvious choices were made easily – for instance, my husband exchanged his leather wallet for this cool, washable, durable canvas one from Wildcraft. But there are so many more changes to be made, from dish wash soap to cleaning liquids and I hope that by the end of this year, we will be able to reduce our cruelty footprint to nothing.

Have you thought about these issues? I’d love to know – do comment below.

Author’s Note: All views and brand reviews/mentions in this article are my own and I am not being remunerated for these in any way.

Published here earlier.

Image source: pixabay

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