Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Use NOT abuse!
While I am not a vegetarian, I believe that Factory Farming is abhorrent. I was at the Pilsdon Community yesterday, and while there, members were building a run for their pigs. It was a large section of a field and they are going to put 3 or 4 animals in it. They will live free range in good conditions and be fed decent food for all their lives. Compare this to what Factory farmed pigs have to put up with, tiny crates and not seeing sunlight or touching the earth.
After much public concern, interest and attention, the UK pig breeding standards were raised and are now the highest in the EU... sadly the public that were so concerned found out that high standards costs more, and so many UK pork breeders went out of business as the public went for the cheaper imports.
Above is a film trailer about a company called Smithfield. This relates to the United States market as well as the UK and EU as they are Factory farming pork in Poland to flood our markets with pork reared using antibiotics in conditions that are, in my opinion, quite frankly tortured.
We would, I am sure, quite rightly call our animal welfare organisations if a neighbour kept their pet in such a way, so why should we tolerate our food chain animals being so treated?
In Matthew 22:4 - Jesus told a parable of a king who killed oxen and fatted cattle for a wedding feast. Meat eating is a symbol of partaking of the blessings of God's kingdom so I do not believe that Jesus would use something immoral to symbolize the blessings of the kingdom, but I do not believe for one moment that he would approve of His creation being abused in the way the film above shows.
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4 comments:
Hey Peter!!!! Thanks for checking in on me. Sorry I've been such a flakey blogger-friend lately.
Anyway, thanks for speaking up about environmental and humanitarian issues from a Christian view. It's been really irking me lately, the fact that so many Christians (esp. here in the USA) preach how much they love God and follow Jesus' teachings, then do the exact opposite, show incredible disrespect for the Earth we've got, show incredible disrespect for other humans, and preach how that as Christians (here in this country, that's synonymous with Capitalists, I think) it's AGAINST real Christianity to take care of the poor, the needy, the earth.
Thank you for being a voice of Christian Sanity, Peter. I may not follow the line of thought & belief any more (I was raised baptist), but it makes me feel a bit better about Christians as a whole to know that there ARE Christians like you who really want to honor God through taking care of the planet he gave us, and our fellow humans. Without your example, I think I'd wind up turning my back on Christianity as a whole, unfortunately.
Kati, thank you so very, very much for your very kind and generous words, more appreciated than perhaps you could ever imagine.
Bless you
Hey Fodda Pete!(As we would have said in my south side neighborhood in Chicago in the US)
This is so disturbing, the entire business of factory farming is horrible! And what are poor folk to do? They cannot afford the free range organic stuff and our government typically refuses to assist such operations. They do, however pour vast sums into industrial farming. As the fellow sid in the movie trailer,'Its going to take a revolution'. One can only hope it will be bloodless.
I think you're quite right. God gave His human children stewardship of the Earth, and that means responsibe care, with use for honest need, not harsh exploitation. Cruelty to other life forms in the name of 'efficiency' is just villainy. I try to buy free range eggs, because having kept poultry myself I can see the cruelty of the 'battery-hen' method. And I do not believe some of these practices are necessary, they are simply convenient for the producer.
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