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India's "sacred cows" are eating masses of plastic. These poor animals are turned loose on the
streets and are forced to graze on litter, fill their stomachs with plastic,
feel permanently full with indigestible garbage, and slowly starve to death.
Thanks to your donations, we are including education about the perils of
plastic in our Education Program.
Plastic Bag Litter Education Campaign: Some 10 years ago, with little foresight to
the consequences, Indian society began using inexpensive plastic bags to
carry a variety of foods, spices and sauces for which this culture is justly
famous.
However, without a system of public disposal in place, these bags, which smell like
food, find their way to the roadsides and gutters of India’s cities, and the
fields and countryside surrounding its villages.
The wonderful Indian cow—prolific provider of milk and labor—is let out daily to
wander in search of food. These grazing cows smell the plastic bags that
litter their paths, mistake them for food, and eat the bags.
The plastic is neither digested, nor does it pass through the cows’ digestive
systems. The swallowed plastic is shunted to one of the cow’s available
stomach chambers where it permanently sits gathering into a wadded mass with
each new plastic item swallowed. In time, the cow thinks she is full, and no
longer eats. Her sides swell, but actually she is dying of starvation.
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This
cow is searching for food around the trough-like garbage bin
Kamala Bai
massages an Animal Aid patient.
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