Prabhupāda: Soul or not soul, when the body is dead, is there any difference of value?
Śyāmakunda: Well, it doesn't seem human to eat a human.
Prabhupāda: This is nonsense, the rascal's nonsense.
Hari-śauri: It's too horrifying for them to contemplate that they may start eating each other.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Or their family dog.
Dhṛṣṭadyumna: Or their grandmother.
Śyāmakunda: But if it was wrapped up in a package and they didn't know it was the dog or their mother, they could probably eat it.
Prabhupāda: Yes, they can eat by packing.
Hari-śauri: They eat their pets sometimes. I used to have a pet rabbit, and one day I came home from school and my father had killed it and eaten it for dinner. (laughter) He said I wasn't looking after it properly, so he . . .
Prabhupāda: Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: This business of simply taking economics into consideration . . .
Prabhupāda: They do not. Rascals. How to live, they do not know. Animals. There is a class of men in India, they take, I told you, the dead body of a cow.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Cobblers.
Dhṛṣṭadyumna: Mucis?
Prabhupāda: Muci, yes. Their business is shoe maker. So when the cow is dead, they take it, they eat the meat and take the skin and the hoof. They make business without any, what is called, investment. Harer nāma (CC Adi 17.21). That is economic. He gets the skin without any price, and he makes shoes and gets full profit. But that is for a class of men, not for all. Economic gain for a cobbler is not the economic gain for a brāhmaṇa. "One man's food, another man's poison."
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Is it considered, Śrīla Prabhupāda, that when a brāhmaṇa is engaged in the activities of plowing and cultivating, that he has become a vaiśya?
Prabhupāda: No. If there is nobody to help, he can do.
Hari-śauri: As long as he keeps up his brahminical standards.