by Aline Silva

I was born in Sao Paulo, Brasil and grew up between the cities of Cotia and Itapevi, just on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Currently, I reside in the unceded lands of the Tequesta, Taino, and Seminole peoples, named South Florida, USA with my main squeeze and canine companion, Paçoca (pah-saw-kah). I am one of two co-directors of CreatureKind focusing on Community Development and am the founder, creator, and director of the CreatureKind Fellowship Program. As you may have read, CreatureKind encourages Christians to recognize faith-based reasons for caring about the wellbeing of fellow animal creatures used for food, and to take practical action in response.

I have been coaching for a little over six years and pastoring folks of all ages since I was twenty-one years old. I graduated with my Master of Divinity from Central Baptist Theological Seminary in 2014 and shortly after became a certified Life Coach.

As you all may have experienced, Christian leadership and ministry take many forms. My work with CreatureKind is a large part of what it means for me as a Christian individual doing church ministry that is relevant for this very time and place. As I will highlight below, the farming of animals has permeated many areas of my and my community’s lives.

I have been plant-based since 2010 when I suddenly became aware of our current industrial agriculture practices and how they prevent fellow creatures from worshiping our Creator.

As a first-generation immigrant of Brasil to the United States, being plant-based means caring for my community. The vast majority of field workers are people of color living in rural, low-income communities. Approximately 75% of field workers were born south of the US border and have either attained a visa or remain undocumented.¹ These siblings of mine are responsible for feeding people in North America and all over the world. They work in harsh conditions and are unable to demand safety because of their vulnerable status. We most recently saw this when Immigration Customs Enforcement raided a Mississippi chicken plant after migrant workers filed a sexual harassment complaint against their supervisor. Similarly, in my native land of Brasil, COVID-19 cases can be traced to the meatpacking industry, which is mostly staffed by Indigenous persons who are also disproportionately affected by this virus and other disparities. Additionally, we know that as the largest producer of livestock in the Americas and the second-largest producer in the world, Brasil is responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon, the displacement of millions of Indigenous peoples, and the endangerment of many protected wild animal species.

As a Woman of Color, especially of African and Native American descent born in Brasil, being plant-based and advocating for the welfare of farmed animals means caring for my sisters here and all over the world. Black and Indigenous women are the foundation of the church and the over-explored² world’s agricultural economy. But we receive only a fraction of the land, training, and economic support that white cis heterosexual men do. Women comprise 43% of agricultural labor worldwide (75% in Africa) and produce more than 80% of the foods required in food-insecure households and regions.³ Additionally, female farmed animals are the ones continuously raped for their milk while at the same time having their kids kidnapped. Female animals are continuously measured and groped for larger breasts, thicker thighs, and efficient reproductive organs, while their male counterparts are either discarded or raised in total isolation. It is also interesting to note that the standards for good quality meat — including breast size — are set by wealthy, cis heterosexual, white men, and the industries they fund.⁴

As a Queer person, being plant-based and advocating for the welfare of farmed animals means caring for those whose bodies are mutilated or discarded shortly after birth simply for not fitting the colonized gender binary or its standards. It also means resisting an industry and questioning their easy access to hormones and antibiotics for cents on the dollar, for 70+ billion land animals, when we cannot provide hormone therapy for my trans siblings, or universal healthcare for all, let alone for the most vulnerable or marginalized, or even a vaccine patent for over-explored communities that are purposefully left even more vulnerable during the pandemic.

As Amos who prophesied good news to the agrarian and the land, I minister in care of animals, peoples, and the whole of God’s creation. If being a plant-based Christian is part of the Gospel, and if the Gospel truly is the Good News of God, it’s got to be so for every body, which is why we seek to dismantle and resist the systems described here that dominate our lives.

I look forward to walking alongside each of you as you discern how your Christian faith will inform how you love farmed animals, the environment, and other people, including those working in the industry, such as farm and meatpacking plant workers here and all over the world.

¹A Story of Impact: NIOSH Pesticide Poisoning Monitoring Program Protects Farmworkers.” Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Retrieved 3/3/2013 from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2012-108/pdfs/2012-108.pdf.

²I use the term “over-explored” rather than the commonly used phrases “developing world” and “third-world” because those are colonizer terms used to describe the very places and peoples colonizers have over-explored, over-extracted, and displaced.

³Christopher Carter in the Society of Christian Ethics, Food Ethics in Practice, a joint presentation for JIFA and CreatureKind, Winter 2020.

⁴A key example is Jeffrey Bezos, billionaire entrepreneur, and founder and executive chairman of Amazon, which also owns the influential grocery chain, Whole Foods. His fortune has funded such projects as a recent trip beyond earth’s atmosphere on his own private rocket. He is commonly under ethical scrutiny, as in this recent article: https://medium.com/the-interlude/another-reason-not-to-do-prime-day-the-whole-foods-ceo-has-no-understanding-of-food-justice-6f0fe7fa770b.