Animal Welfare
Re: Poultry Plant Fires 11 After Abuse Video
Who wouldn't agree that there is not something seriously disordered with people caught stomping on live chickens? The only defense that can be offered for them is that work in a slaughterhouse must be quite de-humanizing. We've all heard horror stories from slaughterhouses. But environment can never be an excuse for instrinsic evil.
Matthew Scully, special assistant and senior speechwriter to President George W. Bush and author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, argues for animal welfare, not rights, from a sound Christian and Natural Law perspective. Never does Mr. Scully argue that animals are equal to Man (as does People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)), but he argues for animal welfare in the spirit of Biblical stewardship. He appeals to Man as the Crown of Creation.
In his book, Mr. Scully says,
Mr. Scully is quite right. A pig is a pig. It has a pig nature. It is not an unfeeling machine. It has a soul: an animal soul, unlike a human spiritual soul, but a soul nonetheless. The Indians were quite right to thank the Great Spirit for the soul of their prey, their sustenance. In his natural religion, the Indian hunter honored God. God is not honored in the factory farm. Mammon is.
While I respect Mr. Scully for his principled vegetarianism, I remain a carnivore (an omnivore, to be exact). It's hard to avoid meat in Korea. While factory farming does exist here, in many country restaurants, your chicken is slaughtered minutes before you eat it. The same can be said of raw fish restaurants.This seems to me a more natural method of food consumption. The reality of slaughter is far removed from the Western eating experience. Some Westerners see Koreans as cruel, while eating their hamburgers without ever envisioning the slaugherhouses from which their meal came!
When it comes to fish, the ethical concerns seem to me to be largely erased. A fish is hunted, not raised for consumption. Although Mr. Scully would disagree with me, I would say the same of whale, the delicacy of Ulsan, my wife's hometown, site for the 57th Meeting of the International Whaling Commission. While I might reflect upon the suffering inflicted upon the cow whose meat I eat, I feel less guilt eating the delicious meat of the freely hunted Minky Whale, hunted by the residents of the Ulsan area for the past 8000 years, as evidenced in the Bangudae Petroglyphs.
Re: Poultry Plant Fires 11 After Abuse Video
Who wouldn't agree that there is not something seriously disordered with people caught stomping on live chickens? The only defense that can be offered for them is that work in a slaughterhouse must be quite de-humanizing. We've all heard horror stories from slaughterhouses. But environment can never be an excuse for instrinsic evil.
Matthew Scully, special assistant and senior speechwriter to President George W. Bush and author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, argues for animal welfare, not rights, from a sound Christian and Natural Law perspective. Never does Mr. Scully argue that animals are equal to Man (as does People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)), but he argues for animal welfare in the spirit of Biblical stewardship. He appeals to Man as the Crown of Creation.
In his book, Mr. Scully says,
- "Pigs and lambs and cows and chickens are not pieces of machinery, no matter how cost-efficient it may be to treat them as such. Machinery doesn't cry or feel frightened or lonely. And when a man treats them this way, he might as well be a machine himself" (from Bush Speechwriter Emerges as Animal Welfare Advocate.
Mr. Scully is quite right. A pig is a pig. It has a pig nature. It is not an unfeeling machine. It has a soul: an animal soul, unlike a human spiritual soul, but a soul nonetheless. The Indians were quite right to thank the Great Spirit for the soul of their prey, their sustenance. In his natural religion, the Indian hunter honored God. God is not honored in the factory farm. Mammon is.
While I respect Mr. Scully for his principled vegetarianism, I remain a carnivore (an omnivore, to be exact). It's hard to avoid meat in Korea. While factory farming does exist here, in many country restaurants, your chicken is slaughtered minutes before you eat it. The same can be said of raw fish restaurants.This seems to me a more natural method of food consumption. The reality of slaughter is far removed from the Western eating experience. Some Westerners see Koreans as cruel, while eating their hamburgers without ever envisioning the slaugherhouses from which their meal came!
When it comes to fish, the ethical concerns seem to me to be largely erased. A fish is hunted, not raised for consumption. Although Mr. Scully would disagree with me, I would say the same of whale, the delicacy of Ulsan, my wife's hometown, site for the 57th Meeting of the International Whaling Commission. While I might reflect upon the suffering inflicted upon the cow whose meat I eat, I feel less guilt eating the delicious meat of the freely hunted Minky Whale, hunted by the residents of the Ulsan area for the past 8000 years, as evidenced in the Bangudae Petroglyphs.
Redeemed by Our Savior, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling in Pohang, South Korea, where I live with my wife, daughter, and son and teach English at a science and technology university. Baptized a Methodist and raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Buffalo, NY, I spent six years as a guest of the Anglican Communion before being received by the Grace of God into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Feast of Saint Andrew, my patron, anno domini 2002.
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