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.
- Rolling Stone Magazine Exposes the Animal
Agriculture Industry
- Famous Quote: Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- Counter of Animals Killed
- What does the Bible Say about
God’s Animals?
- Our Place in the Biosphere
- 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
Your question and comments are welcome