Written by Aline Silva

Ashley and I have recently returned from CTS in the Atlanta area. There we met with friends, led two workshops, hosted A Vigil for Forgotten Animals, and learned from Heather McTeer Toney, Jihyun Oh, Kerri Allen, Tink Tinker, Miguel De La Torre, rev. abby mohaupt, and Melanie Harris among other brilliant scholars and activists.

We engaged in conversations with students, faculty, thought leaders, local activists, clergy persons, parishioners, and community partners. In each of our conversations we brought up the question, “If we aim to pursue ecological justice and Shalom for this earth, our shared home, then how might we, followers of Jesus, engage with animal farming and the food on our plates?” and, “How come ‘no one’ talks about animal farming when advocating for environmental justice?”

Each group and individual met these questions with curiosity and offered us an opportunity to reassert, as Rev. Dr. Randy S. Woodley writes in Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision, “Shalom is meant to be both personal... and structural...In such relationships human beings should make room for the possibility that all creation, in some way, bears the image of the Creator. In other words, there is something of God in all of Creation. Living out these relationships as sacred is living in shalom."¹ Yes, the Shalom of God is for all CreatureKind—animals, peoples, and the earth itself. Often, Christian communities fail to see that collective liberation from the current climate crises, environmental degradation, food insecurity, and apartheid is intricately connected to the liberation of creatures of other species, forgetting that God’s Imago Dei (all CreatureKind) are suffering and dying at the hands of systems that value profit over our collective flourishing upon this earth. How blessed and privileged we were to host these conversations and witness, in real time, Christians of all ages and backgrounds expanding their definitions of “love your neighbor” to include animals farmed for food and making real commitments about sourcing the food on their plates.

But perhaps, the most important event of the week was a Climate Vigil at the Atlanta Forest, where local organizers have settled and are currently resisting Cop City, which includes military-grade training facilities with a mock city to practice urban warfare, dozens of shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad in place of the Forest.

This is a three-hundred-acre, city-owned piece of land that sits in an impoverished and predominantly Black part of DeKalb County. The Defenders of the Forest write, “The history of this particular land is deeply scarred. In the 1800s shortly after the land was stolen from Muscogee Creek peoples, it was used as a plantation. In the early 1900s, a prison farm was opened where inmates were forced to perform unpaid agricultural labor, marking the rebranding of slavery into for-profit prison labor. The Atlanta Police Department currently uses this hallowed ground as a firing range.”²

But what does this have to do with the food on my plate or animals farmed for food?

The 2020 GA census showed more than 42,000 farms operating across the state with 9.9 million acres in production. More than 17,000 of those farms raised cattle, either beef cows or dairy cows. If there are more than 42,000 farms operating across the GA state, with 9.9 million acres in production, how are their practices impacting the air and food quality of the state?

Georgia is a top state in the nation for profiting from prison food factories. (See the map and chart below from The Counter on the Top 10 states profiting from these operations.)³ Recent investigative news uncovered that Herschel Walker’s chicken firm in Atlanta was tied to benefits from unpaid prison labor.⁴

9.9 million acres of deforested land; what is the impact on the water ways? What about the wildlife population?
42,000 farms across one state; what is the impact on food security and access?

17,000 of those farms are beef and dairy industrial farms.

Shalom the environmentalists say. “For whom?” I ask.

And so I must ask, is defending the Forest a political issue? Or is this an environmental issue?

Defenders of the Forest shared that, on January 18, 2023 in the course of their latest militarized raid on the forest, police in Atlanta shot and killed Manuel Teran, a climate justice advocate and environmentalist. Forests serve as home to various ecosystems, including non-humans and humans of all kinds. The destruction of forests affects all of us. The destruction of this forest to train and imprison more marginalized persons pushing them into forced prison labor to produce the food on our plates, all the while causing harm to animals, peoples, and the earth, is an ethical and moral concern to those who follow Jesus and who aim to build an equitable table for all CreatureKind.

And so I ask you, If Factory Farms are sourcing cheap labor from prisons, actively disrupting Shalom, polluting our shared home, causing insurmountable suffering to animals and peoples, then what is a Christian ethical response?

^{1. Rev. Dr. Randy S. Woodley, Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision (Grand Rapids, Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 20.↩}
^{2. “Defend the Atlanta Forest,” Defend the Atlanta Forest, last accessed May 8, 2023, https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/. ↩}
^{3. H. Claire Brown, “This under-the-radar supply chain routes food from prisons to hospitals, food banks, and even schools,” The Counter, May, 5, 2021, https://thecounter.org/this-under-the-radar-supply-chain-routes-food-from-prisons-to-hospitals-food-banks-and-even-schools/.↩}
^{4. Bill Barrow, “Herschel Walker’s chicken firm tied to benefits from unpaid prison labor,” PBS News Hour, October 25, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/herschel-walkers-chicken-firm-tied -to-benefits-from-unpaid-prison-labor↩}