‘You don’t have to be cruel, to be kind.’
Last Sunday, I spent the morning with a few people handing out Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine’s leaflets to people at the March of Dimes “WalkAmerica”, informing them that March of Dimes funds animal research, and that there are other similar organizations that do not. This has weighed on me, because I know people give to charities out of the goodness of their hearts. I happened upon an Australian animal welfare site that had information on various charities, and was struck by the sentence, “You don’t have to be cruel, to be kind.”
Besides hoping that individuals will avail themselves to the resources that inform them which companies do or do not test their products on animals, or which charities do or do not fund animal research, and limit their giving to the organizations that don’t harm animals, I also hope that the churches will begin to look at, and recognize, the various ways we directly or indirectly perpetuate the misery and deaths of animals, and actively look for alternatives. “You don’t have to be cruel, to be kind” has echoed through my mind throughout this past week.
I have not yet been able to find a “cruelty-free” world hunger relief organization that churches would support. But they are out there. If, for whatever reason (and I suspect that there are some understandable ones) they aren’t endorsable by the Church, I would hope that individuals would choose to support them, anyway, again, over the endorsable Christian humanitarian organizations that are inherently cruel to animals. (For now, I’ll leave it to you to search the Internet, if interested, for something like “vegan world hunger relief”, and you will find a number of organizations that help humans without harming animals. Here is one thing I found: http://www.vegsource.com/joanne/qa/qahungry.htm.)
Churches also owe it to their own best interests, not to fall into the category of charitable non-profit organizations that fund the perpetuation of cruelty to animals — especially, knowingly. (Maybe I shouldn’t say that. But I feel pretty strongly about it.)