Voice 1 Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Joshua Leo. Voice 2 And I'm Liz Waid. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1 All across the world, there is one animal that people depend on. In fact, some would say that it is the animal we depend on the most. This animal provides food, clothing and fuel. We use its strength to do work. Today's Spotlight is on this animal, the cow. Voice 2 People have lived around cows for thousands of years. The first evidence of this relationship is ancient rock paintings. These paintings show wild cows. According to scientists, the paintings are about sixteen thousand [16,000] years old!
Voice 1 Cows are also one of the first animals that people have owned. Eight thousand [8,000] years ago the first cows were domesticated. They started living and working with people. Cows were domesticated in three main areas: the Middle East, the Indus River valley which today is Pakistan, and finally, Northwest Africa. The use of cows as farm animals spread all across the world. And the lives of people changed because of cows.
Voice 2 People used cows for many different purposes. Their skin was used to make the material leather. Leather was used for clothes, homes, and tools. People drank the milk from cows and used it to make other foods like cheese. Cows pulled tools used for farming and transport. And their meat was very good to eat.
Voice 1 But the cows changed too. Over time, people mated particular cows together. They did this to create cows for particular uses. If one cow was very strong, the farmer would mate it with another strong cow. This would create strong baby cows. The farmer would mate good milk cows with other milk cows. Over time, different kinds of cows appeared. Today there are over eight hundred [800] different kinds, or breeds, of cows. Each has a different name: British White, the Texas Longhorn, the Afrikaner, the Israeli Red. The names often come from the area where the breed was first developed.
Voice 2 Today, cows live all over the world. But different cultures use cows in different ways. Cows play an important part in the lives of the Maasai people in Kenya and Northern Tanzania. The Maasai get all almost all their food from cows. They eat the meat of the cows. They drink the milk. And traditionally, they also drank the blood of their cows. The Maasai are nomads. That is, they travel with their cows wherever they can find grass. They never live in one place for a long time.
Voice 1 But in Maasai culture, cows are also a kind of wealth. Maasai People trade cows for other products or services. And when a Maasai man wants to marry, he must pay a bride price in cows. The Maasai believe that cows were given to them by their god, and that all cows in the world belong to the Maasai tribes.
Voice 2 The Maasai are not the only people with a religious connection to cows. In the Hindu religion, cows are holy. People may not eat cows. And they must treat cows with respect. In India, many people are Hindu. So in India, cows often live freely. They are not tied or contained by fences. In cities, the cows live in busy streets.
Voice 1 For example, about forty thousand [40,000] cows live in the city of Delhi. They eat waste that they find in the streets. They slow traffic. The cows also produce a lot of waste. The cows can be a big problem. But on one day a year, they are treated like kings. Mattu Pongal is a day to celebrate cows. All over India people come with fruits and vegetables to feed cows. They make special sweet rice to give to the cows. People even put flowers and paint on the cows.
Voice 2 Mattu Pongal is a very special day for cows. But on the other side of the world, in Herefordshire England, there is another special day for cows. This day is the day of the National Hereford Show. Herefordshire is the home to a very popular breed of cow. It is used for meat. Today, there are thirty million [30,000,000] Hereford cows in the world.
Voice 1 At the National Hereford Show, farmers compete to see who has the best Hereford cow. For hundreds of years, people in the United Kingdom have been raising Hereford cows. They have been mating Herefords to make the most beautiful and healthiest cows possible. Families choose their best cow. They clean the cow and make it look as good as possible. They then show the cow to the judges.
Voice 2 Judges look at the cows very carefully. A judge looks at the shape of the legs, the line of the back, and the balance of the muscles. The judges then choose a winning cow. The Day of the National Hereford show is a fun day for the farmers but also an important part of the farming business.
Voice 1 And cows are a very big business. There are over one point three billion [1,300,000,000] cows in the world today. Most of these cows are commercially farmed. That is, they are raised to be sold for meat, leather and milk products. Brazil and the United States are the top two cow meat producing countries in the world. In some places in the United States, there are more cows than people!
Voice 2 People are eating more and more meat around the world. But raising all these cows can cause problems. On very large farms, cows do not always live in the healthiest conditions. They can become sick or injured. Cows produce a lot of waste. This waste can pollute lakes and rivers. And recently, scientists have found that cattle farming is responsible for around eighteen [18] percent of greenhouse gasses. These are the gasses that are causing global climate change.
Voice 1 These gasses come from the way a cow processes food. A cow's stomach is special. It has four areas. As the grass moves through each area, it ferments or breaks down. This process produces a lot of methane gas. The cow passes this methane into the air. Methane is one of the gasses than can harm the environment. Some scientists say that raising cattle is one of the biggest problems facing the world today.
Voice 2 Cows have played an important part in the lives of people all over the world. Each culture has used cows in different ways. Cows have changed the way people live - and still continue to affect and change the world today. Cows are one of God's great creations. He has given people cows to use. But it also is our responsibility to use them well. To raise them to be healthy and strong. And to use them in a way that does not damage the rest of his creation.
Voice 1 The writer and producer of this program was Joshua Leo. Computer users can hear our programs, read our scripts, and see our word list on our website at http://www.radio.english.net. This program is called "Cows Around the World". Voice 2 If you have a comment or question about this program, you can email us. Our email address is radio @ english . net. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye!
