Animal Welfare

These notes supplement the Season 2 Episode 2 podcast called “Earth”. They are really just a set of rough notes on the topic of animal welfare and the ethics of eating meat. They reflect the author’s personal opinions and should not be linked to the policies or views of any church or Christian organisation

Introduction

Animal welfare covers everything from hunting animals, using them for scientific experimentation or entertainment, and the keeping of pets through to farming and fishing. The basic question of our right to use animal products for food and clothing dominates the debate, but even young adults who are not vegan do worry about the industrialised processes used to produce beef, chicken, and dairy products. 

 An important Distinction

In any discussion about animal welfare, an important distinction has to be drawn between so-called “ethical veganism” and “pragmatic veganism. Lots of vegans adopt their lifestyle because they are worried about the environmental impact of eating meat and dairy products. But ethical vegans are the people who say “Meat is murder”. Their lifestyle is based on moral, not pragmatic arguments. 

Ethical veganism cuts to the heart of the Progressive Left’s understanding of humanity. In 1975 the philosopher Peter Singer published a book called Animal Liberation. It triggered the Animal Rights movement. Now at the time, his arguments were regarded as nutty and extreme. But Singer was something of a prophet: nearly half a century later, his book reads like a standard text book from the Progressive Left. 

Singer is infamous for arguing that a pig has more moral value than a disabled child. He asserts that because he defines personhood in terms of function: the ability of a creature to communicate and reason. He completely rejected the idea that human beings were somehow special or different from other species. So he was able to argue that humanity was the oppressor species mistreating victim species. He coined the term 'Speciesism' which he said was the idea that being human is a good enough reason for human animals to have greater moral rights than non-human animals. 

Young believers have to be careful that their views on animal welfare don’t lead them into pantheism. Never forget the huge gulf that exists between a human being and an animal. Yes, we are part of the community of creatures. We are formed from dust. But we are also made in the image of God. We are magnificent moral, rational and spiritual creatures made in God’s image. We have souls that will last for ever. If you read Genesis 1 carefully you will see that there is as big a gulf between inanimate and animate life as there is between animals and humans. 

 Understanding the difference between animal and human consciousness

Obviously, farmers should never treat animals with cruelty. But even if we assume that farmers follow best practice, an emotional argument remains. And it relates to the consciousness of animals. A lot of the YouTube videos anthropomorphise animal behaviour. In other words, they project human subjectivity on to a different creature. Animal and human brains share a lot of commonality. Animals can be curious; they can show basic rationality and empathy. An atheist evolutionist sees the human brain as part of a spectrum starting with jellyfish at one end and dolphins and humans at the other. But building ethics on that position creates a logical mess. 

Think of the well-known philosopher Gwyneth Paltrow. Paltrow is not a complete vegetarian. She confidently asserts that she will eat squid, but not calamari, because octopuses have lots of neurons in their tentacles, and are therefore too smart to eat. Now what sort of ethical framework can be built on the relative number of neurons in a creature’s body? I think it important to distinguish between sentience, which is a function of the brain, and human consciousness, which is a product of the human soul. We have no idea how it feels to be a cow. That’s why animal welfare is a really tricky problem to talk about.

 The Christian response to animal welfare

Within the Christian worldview, we need to start by asking, what is God’s relationship to His creation? And the answer is simple: He loves it. Read Genesis 1, and note the recurring phrase. “And God saw that it was good”. God thought creation was good before we came along. He loves trees and flowers and giraffes and dolphins. One of the most moving parts of Matthew’s Gospel is when the Lord Jesus tells us that our Father in heaven watches when a little sparrow falls to the ground. Job talks about God’s care for the ravens and the lioness. One of the reasons God did not destroy the wicked city of Nineveh was because of the cattle they kept. So that gives us the right foundation. When we are called to give an account of our lives to God, one of the things He will ask us is how well did we look after the creation he loves?

The welfare of animals is an important theme that runs through the Bible. The story of Noah and the Ark is a beautiful picture of man protecting and caring for creatures. Proverbs doesn’t just command us to care for animals. It says that we should empathise with its situation. The mistreatment of animals is regarded as a wicked thing in Scripture. And all those insights into how we should treat animals are a reflection of how God feels about them. 

Animal welfare is a vital area for Christians to address. Some vegans think they own the issue of animal welfare, but that is completely false. It is possible for someone who eats meat to care deeply about the issue.

 What about eating meat?

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were vegetarian. They weren’t vegan, but they were vegetarian. I say that because even in Genesis 1 there is a distinction made between wild animals and livestock, so the keeping of domestic animals was part of God’s perfect world before the Fall. After the flood, God explicitly gives us the right to kill animals for food. And the only thing the New Testament does is to remove certain restrictions on the type of meats we can eat. So it is perfectly Biblical for a Christian to eat pork, for example. Our Lord Himself ate fish and he must have eaten lamb at Passover times.

In his letters, Paul talks quite a lot about the choice to be a vegetarian. He makes it clear that no Christian should look down on a fellow believer who chooses not to eat meat. But at the same time, he will not permit vegetarians to enforce their views on others, or to enjoy a feeling of moral superiority. In fact, in one of his letters, Paul highlights the attempt to enforce vegetarianism as a form of false teaching.

The Bible’s view of meat-eating is more nuanced than a simple ‘up to your conscience’ argument, isn’t it?

Yes, there are a couple of important caveats to attach to the principle of meat eating. The first is that in the Bible, God’s people always knew that they were taking the life of one of God’s creatures. Books like Leviticus are really bloody. You read details of the animal carcase being dismembered. Every part is put to use, and thanks is given to God. The Israelites were not permitted to drink the blood of the animal because the blood represented the creature’s life. The blood had to be poured out on to the ground as an offering back to God. So meat was never a “thing” to an Israelite. He was always conscious that God had allowed him to kill an animal. The problem with meat in our culture is that we think meat is a thing that comes from a Tesco fridge. So I guess the point is that Christians who eat meat should be prepared to visit an abattoir. 

The second caveat is about the amount of meat that we eat. In the Bible, meat was not eaten every day. It was something associated with feasts. So, given the link between deforestation and beef production, a Christian might choose to eat meat every other day. Maybe eat fish from a sustainable source a couple of days a week, and cut down on red meat. I’m not being prescriptive here, of course. Just encouraging people to use Biblical thought forms to make their own decisions. The decisions Christians take here will depend on which part of the world they live in. Never judge those who do eat meat. Particularly those who live in the global south. A chicken is an incredibly efficient source of protein for people living in poverty, and I am sure they would be bemused by a lot of the virtue signalling wealthy westerners engage in.

Why would God allow us to kill animals for food, do you think?

If your sympathies are more on the left of politics you have to be careful that your views on the environment don’t lead you into pantheism. One of the reasons I think God has allowed us to kill animals for food in this fallen world is because the sinful heart most naturally ends up in pantheism. So it is vital that you never slip into a way of thinking that closes the huge gulf between a human being and an animal. 

Veganism is a very fashionable lifestyle choice. What is the Christian view on veganism?

Well, earlier I distinguished between pragmatic vegans and ethical vegans. As far as the first group goes, Paul’s discussions about vegetarianism also apply to veganism. No one should look down on a Christian who chooses a vegan lifestyle. But the Christian vegan should not become a self-righteous moralist who carps at those of us who are not vegans. I think this is particularly important in the home. If a teenage girl wants to adopt a vegan lifestyle, then she cannot expect her parents to double their meal preparation times. Nor should she seek to persuade the rest of the family to adopt her position. Some sort of arrangement might be agreed, whereby the extra cost and time involved in preparing vegan food could be balanced with an agreement to do extra chores, for example. Chores completed with a cheerful heart.

Ethical veganism is a very different thing. I am afraid that it is anti-Biblical. It is not based on a high view of animals. It is founded on a low view of humanity. It is also completely illogical. The ethical vegan believes that she is nothing more than an evolved primate. She is biologically an omnivore. And yet she chooses not to eat other species. Why? Just about every species on the planet consumes other species. Why shouldn’t humans? 

 How can animal welfare be improved?

The most strategic work to be done probably relates to economics. It seems to me that the root problem in the West is that we have commoditised food production. The big supermarkets have squeezed their supply chain so hard that farmers are forced to use industrial production techniques. Now of course we would all want to eat grass-fed milk and beef, organic vegetables and so on. But at the moment those organic food lines are just a lucrative product line that plays on middleclass guilt. 

And that brings us to economics. At the most basic level, we need a system that forces us to consume less and spend more of our money on sustainable food. In 1957 a typical household spent 33% of their weekly budget on food. Today it is 15%. So we have to be prepared to spend more money on food. That will mean less money spent on giant flat screen TVs and holidays in far flung destinations. I have wondered about a food tax on non-organic food, and an extra tax on imported food, because that might tip us into buying locally sourced and sustainable food. So Christian economists should be doing PhDs on these sorts of topics.

Jim Crookes, September 2020.