Lent is upon us, the holiest time of the year for Christians -- a time for us to ponder the meaning of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, his proclamation of "Good News" for the poor and downtrodden, and the degree to which our lives align with Christ's vision. Many will make some small (or large) sacrifice, something that will remind us that this is Lent, and of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
If you still haven't figured out what you're going to give up, some Anglican Bishops from the UK have a suggestion: Give up meat.
The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Rev. John Pritchard, calls meat consumption a "spiritual issue" and declares that he plans even after Easter Sunday "to make a more permanent change to eating less meat." The Bishop of Monmouth denounces what he calls "the damage caused by today's exploding and unsustainable demand for meat."
And closest to my own faith-based reason for adopting a vegetarian diet in 1987, the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt. Rev. Stephen Cottrell, explains that "What I find intolerable and unsupportable is the way we rob factory-farmed animals of anything resembling a normal life, in order to furnish ourselves with cheap meat."
God's Design
Bishop Cottrell echoes the sentiments of Pope Benedict XVI, who famously told journalist Peter Seewald that the question of animal treatment is a crucial one for the faithful. By any measure, what happens to farmed animals today is anti-Christian. For example, as His Holiness explained, "hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds." Similar abuse occurs in all of the farmed animal industries. Explains His Holiness, "this degrading of living creatures to a commodity contradict[s] the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible."
Indeed, it doesn't take much reflection to see that the Pope is right: God created humans and other animals out of flesh, blood, and bone. We share the same five physiological senses and the ability to feel pain -- God designed us this way. God designed all animals with a desire to enjoy sunlight, fresh air, fresh water, and the rest of God's creation. God designed pigs to root around in the soil for food and play with one another. God designed chickens to make nests, lay eggs, raise their chicks, and establish communities (the "pecking order").
Yet agribusiness today denies animals their most fundamental needs. Chickens are crammed into cages by the hundreds of thousands, each with less space than a standard sheet of paper on which to live. During pregnancy, pigs are stuffed into tiny metal crates so small they can't even turn around. Forget rooting in the soil or laying their eggs in nests -- these animals can barely move. The one natural thing they do get to experience is agony -- and lots of it.
Agricultural Frankenstein scientists "play God" by manipulating animals to grow so quickly that their hearts, lungs, and limbs can't keep up, often causing heart attacks, lung failure, or crippling leg deformities within weeks of birth. Modern farmed animals have their beaks seared off and are castrated without pain relief: painful mutilations that, if done without anesthesia to a dog or cat, would be illegal. Finally, those who survive these factory farms are trucked by the billions -- without food or water -- to a hellish death at a slaughterhouse. Chickens and turkeys have it the worst there -- nearly all of the 9 billion slaughtered each year are conscious when their throats are cut, and, according to the USDA, millions are boiled alive.
Jesus' message is one of love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving or compassionate about the modern industries that produce almost all of the chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals who are turned into meat in this country. Christians have a choice: When we sit down to eat, we can support misery and cruelty or we can make choices that support mercy and compassion.
Father John Dear, a Jesuit Priest from New Mexico, explains: "Many Christians who agree that harming a dog or cat is wrong think nothing of harming cows, pigs, chickens, fish and other creatures. We need to understand that if we're eating meat, we are paying people to be cruel to animals. . . . For the simple reasons that all animals are creatures beloved by God and that God created them with a capacity for pain and suffering, we should adopt a vegetarian diet."
Why Not Go Meat-Free for Lent?
This Lenten season, I'll be thinking a lot about what our fallen nature means about how we interact with animals, and what Jesus' arrival means for us and how we lead our lives. When Christians pray, "Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven," the one prayer given to us by Jesus, it seems to me that this should obligate us to, as much as we can, make choices that are as merciful and loving as possible. We are a fallen humanity, but with regard to eating God's other creatures, this is one area where we can begin to live the eschaton vision of the prophets (and Jesus) -- right now.
Father Dear, explains: "Vegetarianism proves that we're serious about our belief in compassion and justice, that we're mindful of our commitment, day in and day out, every time we eat. We are reminded of our belief in mercy, and we remind others. We begin to live the nonviolent vision, right here and now."
It's Lent -- a time for reflection on Christ's sacrifice through small sacrifices of our own. If you eat meat, please consider giving it up for Lent, and maybe spend a bit of this most prayerful season of the year reflecting on whether eating God's creatures reconciles with our hope for God's peace on earth.
Wishing you a blessed Lenten season of prayer, reflection, justice, and tasty vegetarian food.
Follow Bruce Friedrich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucegfriedrich
William Grassie: Redacting the Bible: A Case Study in Historical Criticism
Bishop Prince Singh: Lent Can Be a Season of Action-Reflection
Shane Claiborne: Fat Tuesday and Skinny Wednesday
Most producers insist on keeping settings that are too low—significantly lower than the 120mA used at most facilities in the United Kingdom—to achieve anything more than temporary paralysis. A metastudy of electric immobilization methods (Boyd 1994) verifies that in North America, “the development and application of [electrical] poultry stunning had more to do with facilitating processing than with humane slaughter. . .â€
“The typical amperage used in stunning by our pulsating direct current pre-stunner is approximately 12 to 15 mA†(Austin 1994, cited in Davis 1996). The Scientific Panel for Animal Health and Welfare of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA 2004) reviewed the scientific literature and concluded, “In the absence of convincing neurophysiological evidence, it will be unwise to argue that poultry can be stunned with low currents...†Such low electrical settings, which paralyze but do not stun, have dangerous consequences for birds.
Humane Farming Association investigator Gail Eisnitz explains: “Other industrialized nations require that chickens be rendered unconscious or killed prior to bleeding and scalding, so they won’t have to go through those processes conscious. Here in the United States, however, poultry plants—exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act and still clinging to the industry myth that a dead animal won’t bleed properly—keep the stunning current down to about one-tenth that needed to render a chicken unconscious.â€
More here: http://www.chickenindustry.com/
“True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.†~ Albert Einstein
"There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.†~ Anna Sewell
“Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.†~ Albert Schweitzer
“How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God’s omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach?†~ Henry W. Longfellow
In my umble opinion Jeff Popick is wrong at least on some points. The land needs the blood and bone which has nourished the soil environment since the beginning of time?. In the abscence of natural predators animals“need†humans to kill them before they suffer, and we all should face up to that responsibility as necessary , otherwise an excruciatingly painful death awaits them.
Whether we believe in God and Jesus or Evolution we should ackowledge that everything directly or indirectly feeds on the death of other creatures. Sure it’s great to be as merciful as possible but we cannot put away all killing, no matter how good noble or merciful our Christian motives may be.
I don’t agree with farming animals simply for profit, but If an animal is allowed a fairly long life, the chance to exhibit natural behaviour, rear its young or to fight to pass on their genes, surely that has got be a better life than what they get under present farming practice which only allows them to live fast and die young. A better life for animals goes hand in hand with the necessity to kill them at a point in time. That is a Christian’s responsibility, not something that we should try to avoid.
I have campaigned to the bishops of England for years, nice to see they are starting to think a bit more about the need to show compassion.
Unpopular Vegan Essays: What Is Wrong with Vegetarianism? http://bit.ly/w3TNQk
Cheers,
Bruce
Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
(757) 678-7875
karen@upc-online.org
www.upc-online.org
www.upc-online.org/slaughter/
By the way, electrical stun baths (prior to slaughter) and defeathering scalding tanks (after slaughter) are two different things.
Even if the stun bath didn't render the animal unconscious (which is highly questionable), the automated throat-slitting process is much more likely to be accurate and effective with a still bird than with one that's flopping around.
As I noted earlier, I'm no fan of "factory farming" and try to make sure all the meat I eat is from small family operations. But one can oppose factory farming without resorting to half-truths and misinformation.
Karen and I are in favor of improvements in chicken slaughter and opposed to eating chickens at all. I was at a conference in the UK a few years ago, and the researchers were talking about how the low mAmpage of the U.S. chicken slaughter operations sends all the animals through the entire process immobilized but conscious; these were people who earn their livings doing research for the British poultry industry, not vegetarians of course. And USDA says that millions of chickens miss the immobilization bath (they are not vertical when they get to it--they're flapping around) and are boiled alive. These are simply realities of the current method of poultry slaughter in the U.S., sadly.
Thanks for weighing in and considering these issues.
Yours,
Bruce
“Life is life...The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.†~ Sri Aurobindo
http://theconversation.edu.au/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659
But granted that the slaughter process isn't perfect, it is a gross exaggeration to say that "nearly all of the 9 billion slaughtered each year are conscious when their throats are cut, and . . . millions are boiled alive." A live bird in the scalding tank results in an immediate audit failure.
For the other point of view, please see the National Chicken Council's policy on Animal Welfare for Broiler Chickens, and try to read it with an open mind:
http://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/industry-issues/animal-welfare-for-broiler-chickens/
No, I don't think that all of the poultry industry's practices are as humane as they could be, and I greatly prefer smaller, grass-based operations to CAFOs - but even I have to say that industry practices are nowhere near as horrific as you're making them out to be.
Leviticus 8
14 He then presented the bull for the sin offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. 15 Moses slaughtered the bull and took some of the blood, and with his finger he put it on all the horns of the altar to purify the altar. He poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. So he consecrated it to make atonement for it. 16 Moses also took all the fat around the internal organs, the long lobe of the liver, and both kidneys and their fat, and burned it on the altar. 17 But the bull with its hide and its flesh and its intestines he burned up outside the camp, as the LORD commanded Moses.
18 He then presented the ram for the burnt offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. 19 Then Moses slaughtered the ram and splashed the blood against the sides of the altar. 20 He cut the ram into pieces and burned the head, the pieces and the fat. 21 He washed the internal organs and the legs with water and burned the whole ram on the altar. It was a burnt offering, a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the LORD, as the LORD commanded Moses.