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.