What was going to be a 5-line post has grown out of control. Oh well. The “Page Down” button is your friend.

Frequently Asked Questions about a variety of animal issues:

- General

- Vegetarianism

- Hunting

- Vivisection

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As a clarification of where I stand, my personal attitude is more “animal rights”. My public attitude is more “animal welfare”, because I think society in general has an easier time accepting the word “welfare” over “rights”. I prefer “animal advocacy”, which sounds like a “Via Media” — and which can incorporate the best of both definitions, without the worst connotation of either. (But I’m sure I irritate a few people, no matter how I choose to label myself.)

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The Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals’ official statements on the use of animals for research and on factory farming are posted below. They also have an official position on hunting. But I don’t have access to it at the moment.

“We are greatly concerned at the suffering caused to many animals in the course of research and we believe that the goal should be an urgent end to all experimentation on live animals. We support those organisations which actively and responsibly promote and develop alternative methods. As we work to achieve the end of animal experimentation, we furthermore, given the current situation, urge that governments, industry and the international scientific community provide both the will and the funding to (1) take immediate steps worldwide to eliminate pointless or needlessly duplicated experiments (2) improve techniques so that the number of experiments using animals and the number of animals used are radically reduced and (3) where use of animals at present continues, adopts international guidelines to ensure that animals are protected at all times from pain and distress, not only in actual experiments but in the sources of supply and in their living conditions. Finally, we appeal most strongly for full implementation of EU Directive 86/609 which states that animal experiments should not be performed where non-animal procedures are available, and that the European Commission itself must encourage the development and validation of alternative methods.”

“[T]he Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals opposes all farming systems which frustrate the strong needs of animals to practice exploratory, social and grooming behaviour and deprive them of sufficient space for movement and comfort. In particular we oppose cages and barren environments in which animals live on metal slats. We also oppose breeding and feeding methods, designed to speed food production, which distort and deform the bodies of animals causing many to suffer. ASWA believes that, if animals are to be slaughtered for food, maximum effort must be made to lessen pre-slaughter stress and suffering and is opposed to long-distance transportation and any slaughter methods likely to result in pain and terror prior to death.”

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As posted elsewhere, please choose kindly when giving to disease-related charities. Below is a link to a site that lists charities that fund animal research and charities that don’t. Please bookmark that site, because some of the names are very similar. This is especially important to know when your employer is promoting a cause, like mine does so often. It is also important to keep in mind when a family member dies, and the survivors are thinking about where they’d like memorial gifts to be sent. Funeral homes may have an easy answer for grieving families, with ready-made envelopes for some charitable organization. It is important to know whether that organization funds animal research, so another charity can be chosen.

http://www.caringconsumer.com/searchcharities.html
And on that same site, you can find companies that do or do not test consumer products on animals.

And while we’re on the topic, here is a page that shows which pet food companies don’t test on pets:
http://www.peta.org/feat/iams/food.html

Please note that two of the brands listed are also vegan.
(There are other vegan brands available, and also recipes for homemade vegan pet food. But they haven’t signed on to this list. So it isn’t known whether or not they do animal testing. So if you want to try a 100% cruelty-free option on your cat or dog, try Evolution or Harbinger for a New Age, or Natural Life’s vegan variety.)

The following was cross-posted on at least a couple of listservs:

There’s a virtual consensus among “food
economists” that eating
healthfully at the bottom of the food chain (i.e. veganism
or near vegetarianism) is the most sustainable way for the
human population to eat, animal welfare issues aside. Here’s
a column on the subject by George Monbiot that makes the
basic case:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,865087,00.html

Seemingly the lone dissident, an agricultural academic named
Steven Davis, favours a pastured ruminant omnivorous diet
for the planet:

http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/news/food/vegan.html

Has been rebutted in this paper:

http://courses.ats.rochester.edu/nobis/papers/leastharm.htm

I don’t buy the basic argument in the second article, any more than I buy the “plants have feelings” argument that is used to justify meat-eating. If it is true that it takes 1/10 the land to feed a vegan that it would take to feed a non-vegetarian, as I’ve read from other sources, then it seems to me that any collateral deaths to field mice and others would also be 1/10th. We grow (or import from poor countries) more grain to feed the animals we slaughter, than we grow to feed humans. So besides the slaughter statistics which is estimated at around 10,000,000,000+ land animals in the U.S., (and almost the same number of deaths due to to the misfortune of being born a male chick, or due to “living” conditions and transport, etc.) animal agriculture should account for 9 times more accidental deaths in the fields, just from growing the food that needs to be fed to the farmed animals they kill. I fail to see what is “sustainable” about that. This argument is just an attempt not to do anything, because there are so many facets to deal with. Let’s start somewhere, and stop being paralyzed by excuses!

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Today’s post knocked the survey results from viewers of Peaceable Kingdom from the home page. In light of General Convention 2003 Resolution D016, church leaders should take note of the survey results, and consider looking for resources to educate their congregations without fear of “retribution” from their pledging members, or whatever else causes them to remain silent on the topic about the conditions in which a majority of our captive and domestic animals live, and how we perpetuate that in our society, so people can be moved enough to want to find and choose alternatives that don’t support animal cruelty. And churches whose members are concerned about alleviating world hunger (or even anyone concerned about the environment) should definitely read the first and third article listed above….
Now that we have a national resolution and a Chicago resolution under our belts, churches should become an example for their members by adopting a “least harm” policy for a lot of things, from church politics to outreach, and find alternatives for outreach, fellowship, fundraising, outings, etc., that don’t supporti the exploitation of animals. And they should end their terminal silence on this topic that seems to be so taboo, or that is of too little interest to them because they either never gave it much thought, or they’d rather ignore it for whatever reason. Maybe they’re just too consumed by issues of human sexuality to think much about other issues that surround them in practically every way outside of the Eucharist. I haven’t figured out which it is yet. But I would be very interested to know what is being done to implement Resolution D016 or Resolution I. If anyone is doing anything about it, please post a comment below.

My invitation still stands for the churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. If your priest hasn’t mentioned anything about it yet, ask them and your wardens why not. I would be willing to do something else to help, if anyone has another idea.

Until the churches start taking issues of animal exploitation seriously as a matter of environmental stewardship, “Stewardship of Creation”, as a matter of peace and justice, or as a matter of how we treat “the least of these”, there are those of us who don’t take what they have to say about those topics very seriously, either. Do I sound frustrated?