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The Compass: Dominion: Dominion: The animals and the philosophers

Factual

Buffalo market in India

09/10/2019 GMT

Dominion: The animals and the philosophers

Dominion

BBC World Service - The Compass, Dominion, Dominion: The animals and the philosophers

The impact of philosophy and religion on animals as food

The impact of philosophy and religion on animals as food. Environmental journalist Gayathri Vaidyanathan talks to Jains, Hindus and Buddhists about their attitudes to food.

Environmental journalist Gayathri Vaidyanathan considers the impact of Philosophy and Religion on animals as food. In and around Chennai in India, she reveals how India is managing a terrible dilemma in the massive rise of buffalo meat production next to the catastrophe of animal welfare and environmental pollution. She talks to Jains, Hindus and Buddhists and visits fast food restaurants where young people associate eating burgers with independence and modernity. She also spends time at a pioneering dairy along with one of the many animal sanctuaries in the city.

Producer: Rose de Larrabeiti and Kate Bland

(Photo: Buffalo market in Chennai)

The Compass: Dominion

Writers explore our attitude to animals and attempt to uncover what our human values are.

As awareness grows of the destructive impact of people on the natural world, four writers explore our attitude to animals and attempt to uncover what our human values are.

Two vivid stories of human dominion over the natural world infuse the Abrahamic faiths: Adam’s naming of the animals and Noah’s stewardship of animal pairs to safety during the floods. In both, God is said to have given mankind dominion “over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Today, whether dominion means stewardship or power, non-human animals are in serious trouble. The human population is 300 times what it was, while non-human animals are diminishing in species and number.

Set in Holland, Zimbabwe, India and Scotland and building on a story by JM Coetzee called The Lives of Animals (1999), this series explores attitudes to non-human animals at a point in human history when it has never been more important to reflect on the impact of people on the natural world. 

Four different writers from the sciences and the humanities take a different perspective to frame their inquiry.

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