Why Is Ethical Treatment So Important?

This is the sixth post on the subject of Animal Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating. This post is a bridge between thinking about eating meat to dealing with the thorny issue of sacrifice, which will take several posts to unpack. After a discussion of sacrifice we will move into a discussion of a “rule” to eat ethically.

Now that we’ve defined ethical treatment and discussed how ethical treatment is accomplished, we can turn to the question of why?

Why would you go through all of this extra work and thought when you can just go to the supermarket and buy cleanly packaged and wrapped meat for cheap?

The reason, in a nutshell, is that our faith should call us to a higher standard than the culture we are surrounded by, the one that is only concerned with consuming (whether it is shoes or steaks). Christians are called to care about creation, and animals make up an integral part of creation. We must treat animals ethically, otherwise we aren’t living up to our mandate to be stewards of God’s creation.

We often praise God for how awesome his creation is, but then we forget that our actions can mar and damage creation. Treating animals with dignity and respect not only impacts the animal’s welfare, but also your personal health and the welfare of creation itself.

Just a couple of examples:

Grass-fed beef is better for the environment – when you eat grass-fed beef, instead of beef from an animal that is trapped in a feed lot being stuffed with food it doesn’t naturally eat, you are helping to build richer soil, curb deforestation and create less greenhouse gases (source: “How Eating Grass-Fed Beef Could Help Fight Climate Change“).

You’re healthier: grass-fed beef is healthier for you than industrial beef. Grass-fed beef has double the omega 3 fatty acids as industrial beef (Source: “The Truth About Grass-Fed Beef“). And if you are eating meat that is raised without antibiotics or hormones, you are keeping yourself from ingesting those chemicals when you eat (and allowing the animals to have normal lives, not medically controlled lives).

Ethical Treatment of Animals stops the cycle of chemicals in creation – animals don’t exist in a vacuum. They are an integral part of creation. So when you choose to eat ethical meat you are making a choice that impacts all of creation. If an animal is raised ethically the following chain reaction occurs in creation:

-the grains and grass used to feed ethically treated animals are not treated with industrial or toxic pesticides and herbicides.

-less pesticides and herbicides in the environment help to reduce contamination of the soil, our water and ourselves. There are diseases today like Parkinson’s that appear to be linked to the plethora of toxic chemicals we lace our food with (Source: “Pesticide Exposure Found to Increase Link Of Parkinson’s Disease“).

-less use of corn and soybeans for animal consumption means a more diverse culture of crops. The more crops that are planted, the better that we can protect our economy from spikes in food prices and shortages of food (this has happened during the past few years: “How to End the Global Food Shortage“).

The important thing is that we think about more than just the animals and more than just ourselves. There is a whole world that is affected by our food choices, and the more ethical our choices are, the better the world will be.

The Simplest Way to Raise an Animal Ethically

This is the fifth post on the subject of Animal Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating. This post is a bridge between thinking about eating meat to dealing with the thorny issue of sacrifice, which will take several posts to unpack. After a discussion of sacrifice we will move into a discussion of a “rule” to eat ethically.

In the ever burgeoning world of farm-to-table food, there is a growing desire for ethically treated meat. This, as discussed before, can mean different things to different people. The important thing about the ethical treatment of animals is not as much the meaning of “ethical treatment” but recognizing the choice we all have to eat ethically every day. When we cultivate an ethical conscious it begins to shape our food choices in profound ways.

The how-to of ethically treating animals is fundamentally simple. The simplest way to raise an animal ethically is to follow the golden rule: treat the animal the way you would want to be treated if you were in the same position. Now there is some divergence here, for this is the point where vegans (people who have decided to not eat any food that comes from an animal, including dairy) would say “you don’t want to be killed, do you? So why would you eat animals at all?” It’s a valid question, and one I will discuss in a later post (have to keep you reading, don’t I?”), but suffice it to say that my stance on the issue is that humans and farm animals have entered into a symbiotic relationship, like the one Michael Pollan illustrates happens with plants in The Botany of Desire. Domesticated animals, like domesticated plants, enter into a contract with us for mutual preservation: we keep the animals alive, provide a consistent food supply for them, let them reproduce and enjoy a happy life, and then at the end of their life we eat them.

The way to raise animals ethically then, is simply to use common sense for the most part. Chickens naturally want to be outside and peck. It would be ethical then to allow them to do this. Pigs want to wallow in mud and eat slop. It would be ethical then to allow them to do this. Cows want to walk around a pasture or barn. It would be ethical then to allow them to do this.

What becomes unethical is to treat an animal like it is a commodity. Most big farmers, the ones who shove pigs into crates, cram chickens into cages and jam cows into confined rows, are thinking about animals as part of an industrial production unit. This line of thinking sees animals as not part of a farm but as part of a factory, churning out animal products like computers by any means necessary, which does undue harm to the animals, our environment and ourselves. Large commercial farms lose sight of animals as sentient beings, which allows them to treat animals like parts in an assembly line instead of living, breathing things. It’s human nature to numb ourselves to the plight of a person or thing if it makes us money. Modern day slavery, sweat shops, suicides in technology manufacturing, and animal cruelty are all rooted in the same darkness.

To treat an animal ethically is to allow it to live a life that is both natural and humane. It is to choose a symbiotic relationship with the animals on the farm and to honor an animal for their intrinsic value as a fellow creature and, eventually, a source of food.

In the next post we will discuss why the ethical treatment of animals is so important for Christians.

What Does Ethically Treated Actually Mean?

This is the fourth post on the subject of Animal Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating. This post is a bridge between thinking about eating meat to dealing with the thorny issue of sacrifice, which will take several posts to unpack. After a discussion of sacrifice we will move into a discussion of a “rule” to eat ethically.

It seems to happen more and more often.

I’ll be sitting to eat with some co-workers or friends, and they notice I don’t eat any meat. They’ll ask, “are you vegetarian?” And I inevitably reply, “it’s complicated” (see my previous post “How Was Your Thanksgiving Turkey Treated?” for the full story).

Lately, people have been more than willing to hear about my values: what “ethically treated” actually means, how this is accomplished, and why it is so important.

So before digging further into the Christian basis for ethical treatment of animals, I wanted to share a bit about the basics of ethical treatment.

What does “ethically treated” actually mean?

The short answer is “depends on who you ask.” There is no uniform definition of ethical treatment of animals, and people have different perspectives on the minimum. It can be a very personal and emotional decision. My wife and I have chosen as our minimum definition of ethical treatment that an animal has the ability to actually live like an animal and not a prisoner. This is what Joel Salatin has described as “the pig-ness of a pig or the chicken-ness of a chicken.” What my wife want is an opportunity for an animal to have a normal life and not be confined in a small cage and injected with hormones and antibiotics like it is a lab rat. There are others who take a more radical approach. I know someone who is a vegan but will eat meat when it is hunted, because she does not like the way animals are slaughtered and butchered, but respects the necessity of people feeding themselves by providing for themselves by hunting. I know others who will only eat meat if it is certified organic or humane. There are tons of certifications out there though, and it only serves to muddy the picture, not define it better. Because of this, my wife and I are okay buying something that is not certified as long as we know how the farmer has treated the animals and are comfortable with that. So don’t be shy, go talk to your local farmer or butcher about how the animal was treated.

The point is, whether we can ever agree on a definition or not, the fact that you begin to actually think about the life and welfare of an animal is vitally important. We can’t just be idle consumers who eat whatever is put in front of us. Caring about the meat we eat is to enter into the conversation about “ethical treatment.”

The next post in this series will be on how ethical treatment is actually accomplished.

Writing Update: Whole Foods is Cheaper…

I have an essay published in The Curator which tries to dispel the myth that Whole Foods means Whole Paycheck. I said in front of my College Writing class a few weeks ago that fast food is not necessarily cheaper than Whole Foods, and the aghast looks I was met with prompted me to do some research and come up with some cold, hard facts. My essay “Whole Foods is Cheaper than Fast Food?” fits right into the ethos of my Ethical Eating series, which looks at how Christians should eat.

An excerpt:

…while I may be able to prove to my class that Whole Foods is cheaper than fast food, the value placed on instant gratification, ready-made food and the on-the-go lifestyle is what keeps more people from visiting farmers markets or buying healthy, sustainable food. Eating is often divorced from cooking, or worse, cooking is considered a privilege that not everyone can afford. So the cooking, for better or worse, gets outsourced.

You can read the rest of my essay here.

Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection

This is the third post on the subject of Animal Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating. This post is a bridge between thinking about eating meat to dealing with the thorny issue of sacrifice, which will take several posts to unpack. After a discussion of sacrifice we will move into a discussion of a “rule” to eat ethically.

Robert Capon’s mesmerizing book, Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, is a treatise on nothing more than the theological reason for eating itself. Saturated in the percolating joy Capon has while in the kitchen, the Episcopalian priest beckons the reader into cooking as a spiritual act.

I was hooked from the very beginning because the language Capon uses is so theological dense yet about the most simplest of tasks: making dough, serving wine or cutting an onion. Like an hors d’oeuvre before a meal, here is but a sampling of Capon’s rich prose, as he explains the act of cutting an onion:

Then look. The myth of sphericity is finally dead. The onion, as now displayed, is plainly all vectors, rissers and thrusts. Tongues of fire. But the pentecost they mark is that of nature, not grace: the Spirit’s first brooding on the face of the waters. Lift one of the flames; feel its lightness and rigidity, its crispness and strength. Make proof of its membranes. The inner: thin, translucent, easily removed; the outer, however, thinner, almost transparent—and so tightly bonded to the flesh that it protests audibly against separation.

It is with this zeal that Capon preaches to the reader the joys, frustrations, humor and utter delight of cooking and eating. Capon finds this join in the actual supper of the Lamb, all those times that Christ ate with people or created food for people in the Scriptures, as well as the Last Supper and the Supper that will happen at Christ’s Second Advent.

It is easy to see the joy of cooking as rooted in the joy of Christ’s salvation. The trickier side of the issue comes in the book when reality sets in that, though cooking may be a joyous act, sometimes a “supper of the lamb” is actually a time when you eat a lamb.

This is not as easy of a task as we would hope for. An animal has died that we might continue to live from its sustenance. The connotations to Christ’s sacrifice here, caught up in the metaphor of the last supper, are exactly what Capon intends to capture in this book. The whole world meets us when we sit down to eat. And while that world is marvelous—the breads, the desserts, the onions, the bountiful harvest—there is the dark side of the world that meets us at the table as well—sacrifice, death, malnourishment, hunger. The table, then, becomes a liminal space for the eater: a place where the light and dark of this world collide.

Fortunately for us, there is a greater Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Christ meets us at the table, and comes along side those of us who eat suspended between the first supper of the Lamb and the second supper of the Lamb.

How Was Your Thanksgiving Turkey Treated?

This is the second post on the subject of Animal Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating. Here the idea of caring for animals in Scripture is introduced. The following posts will deal with the issue of eating meat and how to eat meat ethically.

When I am out for dinner with friends or at a work function people notice I get the vegetarian meal. They ask, “are you a vegetarian?” I have tried a good way to respond to this, but the best way to respond I’ve found is to say, “it’s complicated.” If the person appears interested, then and only then do I get into a discussion about the ethics of eating meat in our contemporary world, because it can be a touchy subject, telling someone they are doing something evil or mean.

I am going to try and carry the same tone here. So let me start out by saying “it’s complicated.”

It gets pretty complicated in the Scriptures as well. In my next post I am going to go more in depth with how I interpret the passages on the eating of meat for today. But for now, with Thanksgiving a few days away, I want to ask a more direct question:

How was your Thanksgiving turkey treated?

I am not saying to go through your $0.49/lb. super-sale turkey in the dumpster and go buy a free-range turkey (if you are convicted to do this, by all means, go do it, just give it to a soup kitchen instead of the raccoons in a dumpster). What I want you to think about, as I think about every time I eat meat, is the real story and life behind your meat.

Meat does not just appear on a plate. It is an animal that was once born, grew up, ate and slept every day, was chosen to be slaughtered,  trucked away to a market and butchered. The meat carries a story. More importantly, this cycle should cause us to pause and respect the dignity and story of life behind the meat.

So as you raise your fork in thankfulness in a few days pause and think to yourself:

How was this turkey treated?

How would I want my turkey to be treated? Like a dumb animal? Like a beast?

Was this animal treated ethically? If I have no idea, how can I find out?

And finally, as you reflect on these things, make a mental note for next year to think about these things before your purchase.