Recycled Animal Waste Medicine, Toiletries & Beverages?!?

It’s no secret that we like our meat cheap, so massive factory farming systems continue to fulfill consumer demand at minimal expense to agri-conglomerates (which some argue is one of the greatest accomplishments of the modern world) but the negative consequences are significant. Our hunger for animal protein has come at a huge cost to the health of the consumer, the welfare of animals and the balance of our environment. Even if you can somehow dismiss human health concerns as well as the conditions that animals are forced to endure, it’s exceedingly difficult to look past the eco-impact that raising vast amounts of livestock has on the environment.

A pollution information website called Scorecard states that approximately 2 trillion pounds of animal waste is produced in the United States each year, the majority of it in the Midwest and California. The USDA says that 1/3 of the total volume of waste that our country generates each year is in the form of 335 million tons of dry animal waste products. For a little perspective, imagine a city of 411,000 human residents and then superimpose 2,500 cows over it. Both produce equal amounts of waste, and yet that number really begins to sink in when you realize that American factory farms create 100 times more waste than the human excrement that our municipal facilities process every year.

This organic material is quite plentiful and incredibly hazardous (especially if it isn’t processed properly), leading to waterborne illnesses when manure lagoons leach into public water sources as well as serious air pollution via 400 types of noxious gases. However, animal waste recycling research has been taking place for many years now with quite interesting results. Aside from such practical applications like the development of agricultural cow peat, gardening pots composed of compressed, odorless cow excrement and the conversion of vast amounts of manure into biodiesel, the United States might be able to learn a thing or two about inventive waste recycling techniques from Indian research centers. Based on the teachings of holy Hindu texts like the Puranas and the Vedas, they are in the process of developing (and offering for sale) a whole host of distilled cow urine and sterilized dung powder products, including a healthy soda-alternative along with shampoo, soap, aftershave, mosquito repellent, cancer treatments and toothpaste formulations.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Cow Protection Department in Haridwar was so certain that their cow urine-based healthy concentrate, soft drink and flavored juice line – dubbed Gau Jal and currently awaiting the governmental thumbs up -- would give Pepsi and Coke a run for their money that its director predicted that it would “end the market for carbonated fizzy drinks.” It turns out that the public is still torn, as are mainstream doctors who say that the lack of published findings offering validation on the health and medicinal benefits of cow waste for human consumption and use give them reason to take a long contemplative pause. Still, in a culture that reveres cows as being sacred creatures and follows the teachings of Ghandi who once said that “Mother cow is useful dead as when she is alive. We can make use of every part of her body - her flesh, her bones, her intestines, her horns and her skin", it makes perfect sense that they are investigating all possible avenues of cow waste recycling.  Americans would probably require a lot more convincing before embracing these type of products, but unless we go semi or full throttle vegetarianism, perhaps this is the direction that we’ll be forced to take!