At an annual conference for religion journalists last month, I saw a film that radically altered the way I look at eating meat. At the end of a long and boring speech, which I mostly ignored, Wayne Pacelle, the president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), showed the film Eating Mercifully, which snapped me right to attention.
The clips of pregnant pigs confined to iron cages, a cow being pushed off the back of a truck, and male chicks suffocated to death by the thousands made me feel sick; something about the animals’ helpless dependence reminded me of my own children.
What really affected me, however, was the portrait of Elaine West, a conservative Christian who runs a farm-animal sanctuary in Florida. When she first learned how animals are treated on factory farms, West said she was “so ashamed as a Christian [that] I was supporting that kind of horrific abuse and cruelty.”
Although I’m a Muslim and not a Baptist, as West is, I could relate to her sense of shame. The Prophet Muhammad spoke clearly against cruelty to animals, even telling the story of a prostitute who was granted entrance to heaven because she gave a thirsty cat a drink. For some reason, the animal-rights campaign has never struck a chord with me, but when West confessed to her Christian “shame” about industrial farming, she was speaking my language.
As a journalist, I was a bit embarrassed that this single presentation from the Humane Society had such an influence on me. I’m supposed to cut through the clever PR on any particular side of an argument and get the facts to my readers. But my subsequent research—namely the 2008 report from the nonpartisan Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production—confirmed much of what I had seen in the film.
Eating Mercifully is part of a wider program at the Humane Society. “Animals and Religion,” a section of the HSUS website, links faith traditions to concern for animal welfare. The press kit handed out at the luncheon, for example, included an essay titled “A religious Case for Compassion for Animals” from conservative writer Matthew Scully. Scully quotes Pope Benedict XVI who told a journalist that while humans are allowed to eat animals:
“[W]e cannot just do whatever we want with them….Certainly a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality [between people and animals] that comes across in the Bible.”
Scully also criticizes fellow conservatives for dismissing animal welfare as a left-wing issue: “We belittle the activists with their radical agenda, scarcely noticing the radical cruelty they seek to redress.” I’m guilty of a similar kind of myopia. I’ve often written off concern over the meat we eat as a bourgeois preoccupation afforded only to those who can afford to shop at Whole Foods.
With some trepidation about where it might lead—for example, to the dreaded Thanksgiving Tofurky—I’ve been buying less meat and, when I do purchase it, trying to buy meat that is raised humanely. I was happy to see that my favorite fast-food chain, Chipotle, uses meat from animals that have lived a decent life. I doubt I’ll ever be a vegetarian like Elaine West, but it feels good to at least take some small steps toward making life a little better for the animals I will eventually eat.
(PHOTO: FOTOLIA)
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Comments (6)
as a Vegetarian-Muslim i feel that my soul is cleaner when i dont eat meat… in this day and age with so many meat-free options i dont see the need to eat animals. i do however understand people who like meat and who like to eat meat… i just wish that more people would demand more humane ways of having them raised and slaughtered.
I was at that Religion Newswriters luncheon as that clip was being shown. I also had a strong visceral and personal reaction, also despite my journalism training. Now I’m looking for ways, not to give up meat, but to eat less of it and with more awareness of where it’s coming from.
I’ve sort of grasped onto what you said, but remember that these ranchers are trying to meet the meat demands (maybe not as much in 2002 because of the recession) and using the most efficient method to produce more meat. However, even if US raised the meat prices to treat the animals more humanely (so that high price of meat would discourage the people from buying more of it), it might as well invite other countries to make a deal with the US to import meat (although we are capable of meeting the means of the people).
And the question of “Is it morally wrong to eat animals?” is that no, it is not, since bears eat fish and lions eat gazelles, I don’t see how humans cannot eat meat.
Poke meat should be discourage bcos scientifically is not healthy
i got the ideal that it is not wheather or not to eat meat it’s more of what meat to eat.
Just because your a farmer raising say cow to kill and sell as meat, does not mean you have to kill them in a inhuman way.
i have to say this has made me think more of what type of meat I will eat.
maybe the famer should think what it means to be the higher level of the food chain.
you stated that bear’s etc kill meat to eat, but how do they kill? that’s the question. and they are not that high on the chain.
Se should just be more respondable
We humans are the only species on the entire planet to breed animals for the sole purpose of slaughtering and then eating them.