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.