I'm so crazy now about 'organic' and 'fresh' and stuff that's 'free range.'
It is important that our relationship with farm animals is reciprocal. We owe animals a decent life and a painless death. I have observed that the people who are completely out of touch with nature are the most afraid of death.
If you're buying animal products and can go to the farm and actually see how the animals are looked after, yes, that's an important point. That's definitely the best way of assuring yourself that the animals are being well treated.
In order to get meat, we have to kill. And we are certainly not entitled to any other milk except the mother's milk in our infancy.
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
The pig is not just pork chops and bacon and ham to us. The pig is a co-laborer in this great land-healing ministry.
Regarding factory-farmed animals We owe them a merciful death, and we owe them a merciful life. And when human beings cannot do something humanely, without degrading both the creatures and ourselves, then we should not do it at all.
You can call your turkey organic and torture it daily.
You know, we all oppose animal cruelty. But sometimes we forget that animals on farms suffer and feel pain like all other animals. They, too, deserve to be protected from harm and cruelty.
Animals die even if you eat vegetables. That is the nature of farming. There is a certain sacrifice involved.
I have a terrible image in my mind of a cow going to slaughter. There's not a lot of fight in them. Pigs, they'd squeal and thrash around. They'd fight. It's almost as if cows don't know they have a choice. Not that they don't panic, but they do so in a quiet way.
Chickens, cows, and pigs in factory farms spend their whole lives in filthy, cramped conditions, only to die a prolonged and painful death.
We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong - and possibly more morally wrong - to consume dairy
Consumers of meat, eggs and dairy products might well ask what they are supporting. Do farmers care about anyone but themselves? Can't anyone see the cow for the cheese?
Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.
The industrial food system is so cruel and so horrific in its treatment of animals. It never asks the question: 'Should a pig be allowed to express its pig-ness?'
You know, in our culture today, our Western, reductionist, Roman, linear, fragmented... culture, we don't ask how to make a pig happy. We ask how to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper, and that's not a noble goal.
Our motto is we respect and honour the pigness of the pig and the chickenness of the chicken. That means not confining them in a house with hundreds of others.
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
An environmentalist can oppose factory farming because it's reckless stewardship. A conservative can oppose factory farming because it is destructive to small farmers and to the decent ethic of husbandry those farmers live by. A religious person can oppose factory farming because it is degrading to both man and animal - an offense to God.
My grandmother lives on a farm. And growing up, I assumed that the animals that I was eating and the animals that I was wearing all came from farms like my grandmother's. They all had names, they were all smothered with love, and they all lived to be very old.
On my days off I pick up our chicken's eggs. My wife and I have five chickens called The Spice Girls. Five lovely chicks. And no, we won't be eating any of them for Christmas dinner.
PETA doesn't want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don't want any animals to die ever and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don't want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them probably less delicious.
As we know, there are companies like Monsanto filling the Earth with their genetically-modified poison, which makes me wonder how many people share our belief that it's better to be good.We have to change the world!
Our culture doesn't ask about preserving the essence of pig; it just asks how can we grow them faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper. We know that's not a noble goal.
