Stones Cry Out

Was OT style animal sacrifice cruelty to animals? What about plucking a plump trout out of a river that you intend to eat? You have two choices: 1) let it suffocate; or 2) cut its head off while still alive and gut.

I don't know Matt. I don't let my son squish bugs or kill things for fun, but food is food. I'm appalled by animal cruelty, but am not convinced that livestock slaughter is cruelty. Not pleasant for sure, but I imagine neither was slitting the throat of a live calf and letting it bleed out. And, having done it many times, neither is cutting the head off a live fish. But, I don't lose sleep over it and I'm sure the OT Jews didn't either.

Rick-

I think Matt's point, and the point of (most) of the authors he is citing above, is not that there is anything wrong with slaughtering an animal for food. That alone is (probably) not cruelty (hence his acceptance of free range meat products).

The moral problem is modern factory farming -- and the horrible things that are done to these poor beasts *while they are alive*, not the fact that they are eventually slaughtered. Go visit a modern hog farm. You will not see pasture and mud and straw -- instead you will see a giant, dark warehouse with cement floors, terrible ventilation, and metal crates, with poor pigs jammed so tight they can barely turn around. You will sick sick animals, lying in their own vomit and unable to move. You will see animals with horrible lacerations, broken bones, and every other imagninable ailment, all penned up and alone in their pain and suffering. *And you probably will not see ANY people, anywhere, to tend to these animals.* Many of these animals live their entire (short) lives without ever feeling sunlight on their backs, or even seeing an open field with grass and mud in which to root around. And many of them will never have any contact with a human who is not yelling at them and beating them (to get them to move), or otherwise hurting them in some way.

They live, sentient animals, who unquestionably feel pain (and have been proven to be more intelligent and social than your family dog) are denied even the most basic of provisions, all so that your ham sandwich will be a little less expensive. They are treated like inanimate machines. (And it is not that farmers are inherently cruel people. I'm from a farm state, and have talked to many farmers who are very, very uncomfortable with modern practices, but who feel they have to adopt them in order to compete, because people want those cheap meat products (and the market for "free-range" and other low-cruelty products are just developing). [This is part of the reason --besides money-- you are unlikely to see any people tending to the animals in modern farctory farms -- decent people simply can't stand it, and like to put it out of mind as much as possible. Seriously. If you don't believe me I *strongly* do encourage you to visit one.]

The fish you pull from a river lives a perfectly natural, normal "fish" life up until you pull it out of the river and kill it to eat it. Modern farmed animals have *nothing* like this luxury. They live lives of perpetual torment, cruelty inflicted by man for nothing more than simple ruthless "economics" - what a Chirstian might more properly call "greed."

In 2004, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) noted that, while it was appropriate to use animals as food, it was important to remember that they are “companions in creation,” remarking:

"[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 that comes across in the Bible."

Just food for thought. Check out Scully's book "Dominion" for more. Or go visit a modern farm and just see how it makes you feel inside.

Matt -- "free-range" doesn't mean a whole lot. Seriously. It mostly a marketing scam to take advantage of caring consumers without providing (much) better conditions for the animals involved. If you care at all about animal welfare, you should look to purchase products with a more meaningful label, the best being "Certified Humane". See www.certifiedhumane.com.

PS - why are all my paragraph breaks disappearing? That makes this pretty hard to read...

"What about plucking a plump trout out of a river that you intend to eat? You have two choices: 1) let it suffocate; or 2) cut its head off while still alive and gut."

Um, how about the third option, Leaving the trout where God put him in the first place?

"'What about plucking a plump trout out of a river that you intend to eat? You have two choices: 1) let it suffocate; or 2) cut its head off while still alive and gut.'

Um, how about the third option, Leaving the trout where God put him in the first place?"

That's simple: 1) Predation is part of natural existence until the 'eschaton;' 2) God says we can eat fish.

Or perhaps you have an issue with the resurrected Christ?

Jesus told his disciples to stop fishing and become fishers of men. Maybe he meant that literally? I'm sold. Leave the trout in the river "where God put him in the first place."

Actually, Tony's comments have me thinking. Thanks! More on this topic in a bit. I need to pray some.