Monday or the day of
moon is a milestone in the datebook of different religion. The Jews read Torah,
the foundational text in the morning of Monday while Hindus go for fasting to
please Lord Shiva. It is said that the Orthodox Church observes it as an angel’s
day where as the Theravada Buddhist celebrates it as a day of dispelling fear; Buddha’s
relatives were disputing on the water rights which when he returned from heaven
on the day of moon persuaded to compromise. So, keeping in mind on about the
overlapping of such religious events on Monday and moreover being it the first
day of week, we need to do something different than our normal routine. To
begin the week with meat free meals would be interesting indeed.
History reads that during World War I, the US government received a word of honor signed by 13.0 million civilians in support of ‘Meatless Monday’ and ‘Wheat less Wednesday’ with a common target to aid the war by lessening the consumption of rations. This movement was revived in 2003 by Sid Lerner in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of public health after having found that to cut meat once in a week is worthwhile than reducing fats in every meal. As of now there are 44 registered countries supporting the meatless Monday campaign.
In Bhutan, Meatless
Monday is known as ‘Jangsem Monday’ which literally is a day of awakening mind.
Our main objective is to inspire a diet which helps in saving the animals from
being slaughtered, a diet which save us from gaining weight, and a diet which pull
out us from competing with starving people. More importantly we address damaging
impact of animal agriculture to the global climate change.
Not only the animals are butchered but when breathing they are kept in unsanitary jam-packed condition, and the unwell ones are left with no one to look after. It was recorded that every year 55 billion farm animals are slaughtered to feed 7 billion people and the count will heighten with population on the rise. However, 1 in 8 people are starving in the view of fact that 33 % of global cropland is used to cultivate animal feed crops and 30% of agriculture harvest is not feed to people but to the farm animals so as to meet the requirement of meat. In so doing, the meat industry produces 1/5 of the man made green house gas which means going meatless once in a week is far better than taking 240 million cars off road annually.
Therefore, why wait
before its too late? Take a pledge to meatless Monday, and be in board of
‘Jangsem Monday’. One day in a week can make difference.
