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Are We Being Stewards or Tyrants Over God’s Animals?
December 30, 2013

Welcome to the weekly CVA blog!  In it you will find famous quotes, news and commentaries. 

  1. Rolling Stone Magazine Exposes the Animal Agriculture Industry
  2. Famous Quote: Archbishop Desmond Tutu
  3. Counter of Animals Killed
  4. What does the Bible Say about God’s Animals?
  5. Our Place in the Biosphere
  6. This Week’s Video: CVA 1-min Ad

1. Rolling Stone Magazine Exposes the Animal Agriculture Industry

What an excellent article in Rolling Stone magazine exposing the barbaric treatment of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses! The Rolling Stone reporter sat down with undercover investigators and learned from them the abuse and horrific conditions to which animals are subjected. Indeed, the price of cheap meat is animal torture.

Please visit In the Belly of the Beast
 
The exposure the meat, egg and industries are getting is very extensive and tremendously beneficial for the animal advocacy movement. Simply put, the walls theses industries built around them are finally crumbling.


2. This Week’s Famous Quote

"I have seen firsthand how injustice gets overlooked when the victims are powerless or vulnerable, when they have no one to speak up for them and no means of representing themselves to a higher authority. Animals are in precisely that position."
 
~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu


3. Counter of Animals Killed

These are the sobering figures of animals being killed by the meat, egg and dairy industries every second. Please share this counter!


4. What does the Bible Say about God’s Animals?
 
Jesus  said that God feeds the birds of the air (Matt. 6:26) and does not forget sparrows (Luke 12:6). The Hebrew Scriptures forbid inhumane slaughter or cruelty toward beasts of burden (Exod. 23:5; Deut. 22:6–7, 25:4). Yet, in the United States, virtually all food derived from animals is obtained through intensive factory farming methods. In fact, nearly ten billion land animals are slaughtered each year, over a million every hour, and the number of aquatic animals killed for food is far greater. These animals suffer greatly from stressful crowding, barren environments that frustrate their instinctive drives, mutilations and amputations without pain relief (including debeaking, dehorning, tail docking, and castration), and other painful procedures (Bernard Rollin, Ph.D., Farm Animal Welfare).
 
For example, farmers crowd egg--laying hens in cages so small they can’t spread their wings. Some birds are immobilized when their feet get caught in the wire mesh; unable to reach food, they starve to death. Millions of chicks are mailed via the U.S. Postal Service each year. Although mortality rates are high, chicks are deemed cheap and not worth the cost of humane transport. It seems that contemporary farmers embrace any practice that increases productivity, regardless of how much animal pain and suffering it inflicts.
 
During transport to slaughter, animals are often handled roughly and exposed to extremes of heat or cold. Finally, slaughter typically involves terror and, often, great pain (Gail Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse). Illustrating the industry’s callousness, animals too sick to walk are painfully dragged to slaughter rather than humanely euthanized. Typical of the industry’s attitude, Hog Farm Management advised, “Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory.”
 
If we eat the products of factory farming we are, Fr. John Dear notes, “paying people to be cruel.”


5. Our Place in the Biosphere

If we looked deeper into the life of nonhuman animals putting our egos aside, we would probably see that humans are not at the top of the intelligence ladder. Much research has done on dolphins exposing the amazing abilities they have to communicate and relate to each other that seem to far surpass humans. 

Read The dirty little secret about human intelligence.

Maybe it’s time to be more humble and less arrogant in order to find our place on Earth from which we could help restore, heal and reconcile; and not destroy and kill. God’s animals were created with their own abilities, emotions, instincts and needs. When we embrace this fact we are less likely to cause them harm and more likely to coexist peacefully.


6. This Week’s Video: CVA 1-min Ad

Share this powerful One minute ad by the Christian Vegetarian Association


See CVA 2013 Blogs - Index

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