The Dirt on Humane Washing

This article was originally published by Farm Forward and is reprinted here with permission.

For decades the American public has been subjected to rampant greenwashing, from ads about "clean coal" to "green" labels on toilet paper made from clear-cut forests. Now Farm Forward is peeling back the labels on meat, dairy, and egg packages to reveal a dangerous new trend that is growing in scope and sophistication within our food supply: humanewashing.

[Farm Forward’s] new campaign video takes on the meat industry's increasingly deceptive claims and warns shoppers that simply finding a "humane" label on a product doesn't make it so. Instead, these labels are often industry-driven humanewashing tools: efforts to market animal products to conscientious consumers through deceptive packaging and labeling, promoting the illusion of animal well-being while concealing the extent of animals' illness and suffering. 

While the most basic of these tactics take from the form of "all-natural" or "free range" labels, even independent welfare certifications have become embroiled in the dirty business of humanewashing. In Farm Forward’s latest report, published on the heels of the organization resigning in protest from the board of the nation's largest independent welfare certification, Global Animal Partnership (GAP), Farm Forward reveals that by putting their stamp of approval on factory-farmed products, certifications, too, are likely deceiving shoppers and betraying the animals whose welfare they are charged with overseeing. 

The Grim Reality

With an ever-expanding array of product labels and marketing confronting shoppers, it's hard to know who and what to trust—but we all know what we want the labels to mean: in 2014, for instance, Consumer Reports found that 79 percent of all shoppers expect humane labels to guarantee outdoor access for animals, and 92 percent expect inspections to verify these welfare claims.(1) In reality, though, the smiling cows and hens on grocery store shelves belie the harsh reality for 99 percent of farmed animals: factory farming.(2) The chart below sums up what leading claims and certifications mean.

Peeling Back the Labels

But what to make of all those certification seals and check marks that you see on products? Certifications fall into three categories: First, there are schemes created by meat industry groups like the National Chicken Council that merely obfuscate standard factory farming practices behind an authoritative-looking seal. Then, there are those certifications run by organizations that appear to be watchdogs but are in fact deeply embedded with the industry: American Humane Certified (AHC), whose standards condone practices like crate confinement of mother pigs and dehorning of cows,(3) and the new One Health Certified (OHC) created by the nation's sixth largest poultry producer, Mountaire Farms, which embodies greenwashing, healthwashing, and humanewashing, all rolled into one.

The final category of certifications are independent certifications like Certified Humane and Global Animal Partnership (GAP). These labels can provide meaningful welfare improvements: both certifications, for instance, require environmental enrichments for chickens, prohibit debeaking birds and routinely tail docking pigs, and require cage-free housing for laying hens.(4,5) However, while describing themselves as "humane," these certifications offer tiers of welfare, meaning that only some animals live on pasture. The vast majority of the products they certify actually come from animals with unhealthy genetics who were raised in total confinement. 

Some of the most basic and least-considered welfare provisions, like those listed in the chart below, are simply incompatible with factory farming and are often left unresolved by even the most stringent certifications.(6) The reality is that the certified "better" meat dominating grocery shelves is still cruel and overwhelmingly derived from genetically modified, unhealthy animals.

Join the Movement for Truth in Labeling

Humanewashing fools us into paying higher prices for factory farmed products. So how can you shop according to your conscience? Fortunately, as our Food Choices page explains, with some effort, we can seek out those rare products that meet a minimum standard most of us expect: animals free to roam on pasture. For many shoppers, centering plants on their plates is easier than decoding the sea of deceptive labels at the grocery store to find the few products that align with their values.

Just as important as eating according to your values, you can help us stop the dirty business of humanewashing where it starts. Supermarkets stock what their customers demand, so let's tell them to do better. Next time you're shopping, ask the meat department manager to start offering more pasture-raised products and ditch the worst humanewashers like American Humane Certified and One Health Certified.

Get the Latest Dirt on Humanewashing

• Farm Forward Campaign and Ad Blitz Denounce ALDI’s Deceptive New Chicken Label (April 22, 2021)

• NowThis: How the Meat Industry Uses 'Humane Washing' Terms (April 6, 2021)

• Coalition Blasts "One Health Certified" Meat Industry Humanewashing Scheme (January 26, 2021)

• Farm Forward Report Exposes the Dirt on Humanewashing (December 30, 2020)

• Why We Resigned from the Board of the Nation's Largest Animal Welfare Certification (October 2, 2020)

Sources 

1. Consumer Reports National Research Center. 2014. Food Labels Survey. http://www.panna.org/sites/default/files/ConsumerReportsFoodLabelingSurveyJune2014.pdf.

2. Farm Forward calculation based on U.S. Department of Agriculture 2012 Census of Agriculture, June 2014.

3. American Humane Certified. 2020. “Science-Based Standards.” http://humaneheartland.org/our-standards/.

4. Certified Humane. 2020. “Our Standards.” https://certifiedhumane.org/our-standards/.

5. Global Animal Partnership. 2020. “Our Standards.” https://globalanimalpartnership.org/standards/.

6. One independent certification, A Greener World’s (AGW’s) Animal Welfare Approved (AWA), stands out as anomalous: it is both the smallest and the most rigorous. It is the only certification that avoids the particularly disturbing humanewashing involved in certifying as humane products from animals raised in intensive confinement. However, AWA, too, struggles with the reality that other forms of cruelty, such as the forced separation of calves and mother cows before natural weaning or the use of genetic lines of chickens prone to disease and chronic pain, are so pervasive in modern animal agriculture that even it cannot insist that these cruelties be banned and continue to operate. Further, AWA’s high standards and commitment to protect smaller independent farmers have precluded its ability to scale to the level of other certifications like GAP. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the circumstances under which the meat, poultry, dairy, and egg companies that dominate the industry today would adopt AWA standards at scale with options like AHC, Certified Humane, or GAP available. Thus, while AWA could partially be viewed as an exception to the humanewashing rule, its inability to achieve market scale is another datum illustrating the failure of animal welfare certification.

DefaultVeg Dishes For a Tasty Summer

by Megan Grigorian

If you’re new to DefaultVeg, or just need some help gathering delicious plant-based recipes to bring to your next family or church gathering this Summer, we have you covered. These dishes will please any palate, and no one will be missing the animal products or protein. We’re bringing you flavorful bites, easy for any level of cook, that are solid stand-bys to have in your recipe box for potlucks or dinners at home. If you’re in the Global South, you might want to take a peek here at our cozy, hearty dishes for colder weather. Stay safe and enjoy!

Apricot-Sesame Cauliflower Wings

Photo: Tyler Essary/Today

Cauliflower is a perfect vegetable for delivering the flavors and texture of a crispy wing. Chef Chloe Coscarelli’s recipe brings all the sticky sweet goodness of this traditional US-American snack that will have your guests going for seconds. Check out the full recipe here.

Warm Butter Bean Salad

Photo: VegNews

Bryant Terry creates beautiful, flavorful food, with each recipe in his books so thoughtfully executed. His book “Vegan Soul Kitchen” even pairs the recipes with a song that complements the essence of each dish. It’s a touching collaboration that makes his recipes fun to prepare and share. This salad printed in VegNews from Terry’s latest book “Vegetable Kingdom” is delicious, comforting, and memorable every time.

Pulled Jackfruit BBQ Sliders

Photo: Tasty

Jackfruit is a fruit that is a perfect stand-in for bbq dishes. The texture soaks up any sauce and mimics a bbq sandwich so well--it’s a great meal to serve people who are new to DefaultVeg eating or those who don’t like to eat processed animal meat substitutes. There are many good jackfruit bbq recipes out there, but this is a solid one for beginners that you can tweak based on your personal tastes. Just don’t skip the liquid smoke (which works great for making your own “bacon” out of rice paper as well). Check out the recipe here.

Crockpot Meatballs

Photo: Megan Grigorian

If you’ve been to a church potluck in the Southern or Midwestern United States, there is a good chance you’ve seen or tasted crock-pot meatballs. This dish is so comforting and incredibly easy to make plant-based. Just follow any standard crock-pot meatball recipe. Most call for 10 oz of grape jelly and 12 oz of your favorite bbq sauce or chili sauce, and a bag of meatballs. Gardein, Beyond Meat, Aldi, and other brands have great substitutes. They just need to be thrown into the crock-pot with the rest of the ingredients. Set on low for four hours, top with green onions or chives for color, and you have yourself a delicious appetizer.

Mac n Yease

Photo: Plum Bistro

This version of Mac n Cheese is so yummy and is a signature dish from Minki Howell, a Seattle chef who has built an empire from her mission to make vegan food part of the US-American culture. (Check out her compelling story and restaurant history here.) This recipe is really everything you want from mac n cheese--it’s rich, creamy, smoky, layered, and is the food equivalent of a long hug from an old friend. It’s great for a crowd, a picnic, backyard bbq, or yourself any night of the week. You’ll want to try this. Full recipe here.

Passionfruit Chocolate Tart

Photo: Delicious.com

A dessert that combines chocolate and fruit is going to be high on my list for a summertime treat. This simple and mouth-watering recipe comes from an Australian chef Shannen Martinez known for making fresh, casual, and creative vegan dishes at her restaurants and in her cookbooks. This is a beautiful dessert that is easy to make and impressive to serve. It’s a lovely end to any meal. Her full recipe is printed here.

On the Need for Eco-Salvation

By CreatureKind Fellow, Shea Watts

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it; – Psalm 24:1

… you save humans and animals alike, O Lord. – Psalm 36:6

In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh… – Acts 2:17 

that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself… – 2 Corinthians 5:19

---

Does God, the Parent Hen who gathers their chicklings under their wings, care about the wellbeing or suffering of animals? What does Jesus, Lamb of God and Good Shepherd, have to offer for the billions of animals who suffer and are slaughtered for an unsustainable food production system? Does it pain God that colonizing humans are destroying the good creation, a world that God loves and reconciles? I want to explore these questions by considering the notion of salvation beyond the category of the human to the earth to include all life within it. By salvation, I mean the work of removing barriers for creaturely flourishing and freedom. 

The idea of extending our understanding and scope of salvation to other-than-human animals and the earth is not as large of a leap as it may first appear. In fact, sacred texts are rife with ancient examples that suggest we share more in common with our animal kin than we realize. While the earthling, haadam, is made in God’s image and likeness in Genesis, this does not establish humans at the pinnacle of God’s creation. Humans in these ancient creation stories are called not to practice power over the creation, but are commanded to tend to it, to offer care, and to use their means to preserve the wellbeing of other animals and the world. 

Consider the words of the psalmist, who considers God’s salvific plan to include the other-than-human. Listen to Peter’s reiteration of Joel’s prophetic vision that the Spirit will be poured out on “all flesh,” that is, all life. Ponder the idea proposed in Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth that God in Christ was reconciling the world (kosmos, i.e., the world). When we take into account the Scriptures’ expansive portrait of God’s salvation, we realize how limited we have made it when we deem only humans as worthy to be saved. And by doing so, we condemn other-than-human forms of life to death. The word “salvation” also signifies safety and the preservation of life. To perpetuate harm and even death, then, is theological malpractice. A critical lens into how our faith has shaped and shapes our relations to others reveals how what we think about God and ourselves affects how we act in the world.

Over the course of history, hubristic humans have ascended, assumed, and aspired to a sort of god-status over the creation. This is rooted in a deep misunderstanding of dominion as domination or total control over the creation, rather than the deep care and responsibility inherent in the creation stories. And there are scriptures that we can reference to make that argument as well. What I want to point out, however, is that our special arrogance compels us to commit acts that seem to be grandiose but are in truth not as generative as the Creator’s. To be sure, colonizing humans’ work largely has been marked by destruction, not creation: we have brought about death for countless species and pushed ecosystems to the brink of utter annihilation. For this reason, this geological age of evolution is called the Anthropocene, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant—and detrimental—influence on climate and the environment. Anthropocene is what happens when humans play god. If we are gods, certainly we are not good. As bell hooks writes, “When we love the earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully.” Conversely, the opposite is also true: if we destroy the earth, we destroy ourselves. Does God not want to preserve and “save” the goodness of the creation? 

In order to combat our propensity to destroy, I believe we must first repent from our self-idolatry and reimagine our faith to include other-than-human animals and the earth itself. 

Ivone Gebara writes: “Patriarchal theology, and especially creation theology, legitimized both oppression and domination of nature and the existence of hierarchal relationships among all beings.” For Gebara, anthropocentrism leads to androcentrism. Her work shows how oppression is multifaceted and interconnected. For example, human supremacy, fueled by rationalism and individualism, interprets the world and what matters most based solely on our human experiences and beliefs. By virtue of this way of constructing the world, the human is placed at the center of relations and the top of the hierarchy of being. The closer that someone is to the human, the more likely we are to offer our care and compassion. It is why we care for our pets. But this cuts in both directions. It is also why we animalize others when they do not live up to our human standards, constructs, or norms. Racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, etc., are examples of how the category of the “human” wields power-over, power that undergirds our unjust and unsustainable practices as well as motivates unspeakable acts and atrocities we commit against one another. 

But this is not what God intends. Human-worship, or self-idolatry, therefore, is “sin,” which simply means “to miss the mark.” (The mark, here, is God’s intrinsic value, love, and concern that God has for all of creation). In the Christian tradition, responding to sin requires repentance. Repentance connotes a change, a turning-away from one way of being and acting and a move in the opposite direction. For many Christians, this act of repentance is a prerequisite for salvation. But understandings of salvation are often as problematic as are notions about the human’s place in creation. Who is included or excluded from God’s salvific plan, and what it means to be “saved,” are historical debates responsible for schisms, fractures, and new movements within the tradition. Ultimately, these are questions about what is at stake and by what means God is involved in the history of our world.

To be honest, I am not interested in pie-in-the-sky narratives of salvation. I do not seek to be saved from the fires of hell to a heaven with streets of gold. Life is what I know, but what lies beyond death is a mystery. I am more interested in the goings-on of the world in the here and now, for example, the wildfires of California and elsewhere that threaten our lives and the lives of our animal kin. I am more concerned with the plight of peoples, especially those affected by industrial farming and agriculture, the suffering of other-than-human animals, and the ongoing destruction of our world’s habitats and ecosystems. It is clear in the Lord’s Prayer that the thrust of God’s kin-dom is downward. How can God’s kin-dom exist “on earth” if there is no earth or life left on it? The scriptures do tell us the rocks will cry out. 

“But what about Jesus?” you ask. Good question. Episcopal priest and horse enthusiast Carter Heyward writes that we must “de-anthropocentrize” Jesus, that is “to show that humankind is not the center of God’s realm any more than the earth is the center of the universe… Christ is as much a pelican, an elephant, and a tree as she is our brother from Nazareth.” How should we treat animals when we realize that Christ is present in them? Heyward continues: 

It is rather, for eco-liberation theologians, that the earth and all creatures are embedded deeply in God and that God—in her christic paradigm—reveals herself through all creatures great and small. Christ is the pelican, the sparrow, the tree, and the water, just as Christ is the subjugated human.

The point is not to deny that God, in Christ, was present in Jesus. Rather, she suggests that God’s presence is not limited to Jesus. Expanding our understanding of God’s presence with and in all creatures, especially those who suffer, shakes loose the shackles of individualism that sever our lives from others. The Christian church in the West has largely missed and downplayed the collective nature of sin by focusing on the purportedly autonomous human individual. Of course, then, the collective nature of salvation also is too narrow. What God has to say, and whether my understanding of theology can address the exigencies and vicissitudes of these urgent crises, is my ultimate concern. Any talk of salvation that does not take into account these things falls well short of the wholeness, safety, and flourishing that God desires for all of creation. 

My work as a fellow with CreatureKind has taught me a valuable lesson, mainly, that any approach to the work of animal welfare and eco-theology should be done with humility. When we consider the harm we humans have inflicted upon the earth, it should bring us to a poignant reality: that we need to repent from our sinful ways and be converted to a new reality that sees all of God’s creation as worthy of salvation. This is what the kin-dom of God is like. The psalmist writes: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” Such beautiful, broad language invites us to consider that the breadth of God’s salvation is all-encompassing and more far-reaching than we may realize. 

Shea Watts (he/him/his) is a PhD candidate in Theology and Cultural Criticism at Chicago Theological Seminary. Shea, his spouse, and their three cats live in Charlotte, NC, where Shea works at Christ Episcopal Church as the Associate Director of Contemporary Worship and Liturgy. His project with CreatureKind reflects his belief that faith and food are inextricably entwined, and Christian practices should be informed and shaped by faith. He will be focusing on education at his local parish, raising awareness of the harms of factory farming in NC and constructing a theology of connectedness, creatureliness, and responsibility for the earth.

Not “Either/Or,” but “And”

by CreatureKind Fellow, Estela Torres 

I was raised in a conservative Catholic environment in Monterrey, Mexico.

I felt a deep love for animals from a very young age and was very sensitive to their suffering. Perhaps it was my mother’s stories about her childhood dog, Bobby, that made an impression on me. My mother described Bobby as  an intelligent and sensitive being. In fact, my childhood was full of encounters with singular animals, individuals. These encounters were personal and felt far from the impersonal, inferior images of animal species that my church presented to me.

During all these years, I had a hard time understanding people’s indifference towards animals. Stray dogs, whom I saw almost every day in the streets of my native city of Monterrey, were not seen as beings in need of help and compassion. They were ignored as if they were invisible, as if humans did not have any duties towards them. I also have a sad memory of a Catholic school fair where there was a stand called Noah’s Ark. You could win live animals, including chicks and rabbits. I remember children playing with the chicks as if they were balls, throwing them in the air and letting them crash to the ground. I suffered in silence for them. No one seemed to care. No adult was there to tell them to stop or to teach them compassion for living sentient beings.

In high school, I found a book in the library about animal rights, and that’s when it all started for me. I learned that some people cared and were concerned about animals. Soon, all my writing in school was about this topic. At that time, I had a very good friend who was an example of kindness to me. She was a very devout Catholic like her whole family. She was like a role model for me, but her heart and compassion stopped at humans. She even defended bullfighting. What was so confusing was that her arguments were religious. 

My love for animals also had to do with God. I prayed for animals, really believing that God cared for them. Nevertheless, I started doubting my beliefs because my church never mentioned animals. Animals were absent in a human-only vision of the world. Moreover, I began to realize that my church thought animals had been placed in an inferior category, which meant we should even keep our distance. Since then, I have carried this question about animals and my faith:

How can my religion, which preaches compassion and kindness, not extend that compassion to animals?

When I moved to Lyon, France, I started taking theology courses at a Catholic university. I did not get a positive response to my question. On the contrary, it seemed “funny” that someone was interested in animals. Some professors or priests said, “our priority is human beings.” In the soteriology course, I was told that salvation was only for human beings. In a class on Genesis, the professor angrily claimed that God had not made a covenant with animals. I tried to give a talk on animals once in my Dominican lay group and again, the reactions were of resistance. Everywhere I tried to talk about Christianity and animals, I got this kind of automatic response: “Yes, but man is the only being that....” “Yes, but man is the only being capable of...,”  and “Animals lack or are not capable of…” 

I realized that there was something different about how animals were viewed because none of the arguments I was given justified the horrible treatment humans give to animals. I felt very strongly that regardless of whether non-human animals were different or even if they were “inferior” or “irrational” as I was told, nothing gave humans the right to use or kill them. Or, another way of saying this: my fellow Christians did not see the animals. They merely thought about them. Their arguments served as a veil for not looking at the animals.

Another common response and one I wished to explore was the idea that I should prioritize human suffering over animal suffering. I have heard this type of phrase many times while advocating for animals in a Christian context. I never understood the logic. I usually responded, “Why not both?” It seemed to me that this assumption—that we ought to deal with human misery first and then think about the animals—was used to maintain a hierarchy between humans and animals, a manufactured competition. The urge to place human beings as the winners and on the top made no sense to me. As if there were a need to choose, as if there were not enough for everybody. As if God's love were not infinite, as if God were not capable of caring for all of creation.

I sometimes had the impression that Catholics were so preoccupied with human salvation and aspiration to holiness that they forgot to question the real sense of being created in the image of God and what image of God they were expressing. For me, holiness and hell did not go together. We could not be holy to ourselves and other humans while being devils to animals, aspiring to heaven while creating a hell in this life for animals and the earth they inhabit. 

In 2013, I found  the French translation of Andrew Linzey’s Animal Theology. The following year, I attended the Oxford Center for Animal Ethics Summer School session. The topic was about the ethical adequacy of religious attitudes to animals. It was a very enriching experience, seeing religious people concerned and interested in animals. I felt less lonely meeting other Christians thinking carefully about animals. Around that same time, I was surprised and delighted to discover a French website about animals and Christianity, the Fraternite pour Respect Le Animal (FRA). Today, I am in charge of this organization in France.

Four years later, I attended a conference and heard David Clough speak about CreatureKind and the six-week course for churches. The CreatureKind message resonated very strongly because it answered many of the questions I had been looking for. But, it was the CreatureKind approach that caught my attention and interest. CreatureKind’s inclusive position—of inviting Christians, right where they are, to start conversations about animals and the Christian faith—felt like an excellent first step. I thought that a tool like the six-week course would help Christian animal advocates in France. We are such a minority that this could be of invaluable help. Today I am part of the CreatureKind fellowship and will be soon presenting my project: a French version of the CreatureKind course!

Through the Fellowship, I am learning how justice for animals is part of a larger picture where other social justice issues (racism, speciesism, colonialism, etc.) converge. This has helped me understand  more about my country Mexico and where it stands concerning respect for animals, racism, classism, discrimination towards indigenous peoples, etc.

Every country has its particular context. By exploring with CreatureKind how these issues appear in the US context, I see the similarities and the differences concerning my own country Mexico, as well as France, where I live today. So far, my main struggle has been to convince others to include animals into the circle of Christian compassion. I am convinced that we need to advocate for humans, animals, and the environment at the same time. 

At first when beginning to explore the intersections of these justice issues, I was worried that this approach would take the attention from animals. I feared that animals could get lost among all the other causes. But it is important to remember that the aim is justice for all, not division or separation. I don’t think anti-racism means to be against white people or feminism is to be against men. So, too, to advocate for animals does not mean to be anti-human.

Reflecting on anti-speciesism as part of the CreatureKind fellowship led me to explore the concept of dualism as explained by the Franciscan friar Richard Rohr. Both of these notions have helped me understand why some humans worry that helping animals means taking away from humans. This is where understanding dualistic thinking can be helpful. Rohr says, “The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking, where everything is separated into opposites. It knows, by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing many variations exist between the two ends of each spectrum.” Unless we are conscious of this way of looking at the world, we will not perceive the interconnectedness of everything that exists. In one interview about racism and non-dualistic thinking, Rohr explains how the church has neglected its central work of teaching prayer and contemplation. This allowed the language of institutional religion itself to remain dualistic. A system based in duality can not perceive oneness, while contemplation allows us to see the wholeness of things.

Understanding the way dualistic thinking works helped me see why people were not very receptive to my early attempts to speak on behalf of animals. I realized that this rivalry between humans and animals could maybe be solved by understanding dualism. To end the tug-of-war, we need to stop and ask if we are seeing and responding to particular situations and ideas in a dualistic way. Exploring dualistic thinking has helped me understand these types of ready-made automatic responses or clichés that I have heard so often for so many years. The only way to respond is through a non-dualistic approach, to show that humans, animals, and the natural environment are connected, and that to harm one of these three groups is to harm them all. 

Today I am putting into practice CreatureKind’s approach of meeting people where they are to start conversations. I see this as an open, welcoming attitude, a form of invitation without obligation or judgment that makes people more willing to listen and less likely to adopt a defensive mindset. For a while at the beginning of my advocacy work, one of my priorities was to advocate for people to stop eating animals. For me, this was part of a search for coherence. Now, I think that opportunities to meet people are lost when we begin with this approach. Before talking about whether or not to eat animals, we need to reflect on the relationship between our Christian faith and concern for animals. Each Christian and Christian community must discern for themselves whether their faith has something to do with animal welfare. For some animal rights activists, this can sound like treason. I feel more comfortable having an open position towards Christians rather than starting purely from a vegan perspective.

Despite some new elements on animals’ status, such as the intrinsic value of creatures presented in Pope Francis’s encyclical, it is possible to conclude that the situation has not changed. The Catholic religion in the traditional branch remains anthropocentric. If God is the end of the universe, man is an intermediate end and is at the center. Despite this seemingly closed door, there is hope with open windows. Inside the Catholic faith, other traditions, such as the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi, include animals and all creation into one whole community. We have the example of Saints that had special and close relationships with animals. Today, Catholic theologians are also working on these issues, which shows that it is possible to pursue a  positive current, among the anthropocentric ocean, to help change how the Catholic Church sees animal-kind.

Estela Torres is an independent artist, born in Mexico, living in France, who has co-founded the FRA (Christian Organisation for Animal Respect). She studied art at the University of Monterrey and the Glassell School of Art (Houston, TX) and Animals and Society at the University of Rennes 2. Estela’s artwork places concern for animals in the midst of Christian spirituality and culture. Her CreatureKind project will consist of presenting (and translating) the CreatureKind six-week course to Christian churches in France.

Seeking Hope in the Garden of Gethsemane

by Alyssa Moore

John 18:1-3. Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered. Judas his betrayer also knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards from the chief priests and the Pharisees and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons.

Mark 14:32-36: Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.” He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”

My fellow worshippers, the word of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Good morning. My name is Alyssa Moore, a CreatureKind Fellow, and I will be sharing a few words for us today.

Beloved of God, we have journeyed through yet another Lenten season. We have gone into the wilderness with Jesus. Through our prayer, through fasting, through mourning, through works of justice and mercy, we have walked into the desert. And so perhaps it’s fitting that now, in Holy Week, we begin and end in a garden.

In the Gospel of John we read that, “Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered.” We read that Jesus has often been there with his disciples. We know that in Jesus’ ministry up to this point he speaks repeatedly of the beauty of creation, its belovedness and worthiness of care in the eyes of God. And right before what he knows to be a night of anguish, Jesus seeks refreshment and peace and companionship in the garden. Jesus seeks communion with God and answers to prayer in the garden. We can picture what it looked like, what kind of trees and grasses, what kind of flowers and creatures might be there with Christ. We can picture our own gardens, our own communities and ecosystems.

And today we can hear Christ asking us to keep watch and be present with him in that garden, just as he asked for the company of Peter, James, and John. Just as he asks that the cup might be taken away from him, we may be frightened of what Jesus is asking us: of what he might call us to see, to experience, to do. Because as we have experienced, all too often, the quiet garden soon becomes the scene of injustice, violence, and persecution.  

White supremacy, colonialism, greed, and speciesism have uprooted the “gardens” we live in, and just as Jesus is taken from the garden to the place of judgment, we know that we have dispossessed peoples of their lands and animals of their homes. The violence and injustice of our political systems is not a phenomenon unique to Jesus’ day.

White supremacy has cried out “crucify them” to BIPOC communities—to Black and Asian Americans, to the indigenous peoples whose stolen lands we colonize, to the people and countries our food systems exploit. Religious and political institutions have cried out “crucify them” to our queer and trans family. Capitalism and imperialism cry out “crucify them” to the disabled, the poor and working-class. And speciesism cries out “crucify them” to the community of creation, perpetuating a never-ending Good Friday for both animal and human bodies, in order to put meat, fish, and dairy products on the table.

We began in a garden and we end in a garden. We read that, “In the garden there was a new tomb,” where Jesus was laid after he is crucified, and has surrendered his spirit to God. In the world these days it seems that there is always a new tomb, a new crisis, a new tragedy; the world has already ended and ended so many times, for so many people, and animals, and continues to end every day: through mass shootings, through pandemics, through harmful legislation, through climate change, pollution, industrial animal agriculture. We may feel like the men who offer their help in claiming the body of Jesus, or the women who bring the burial spices and ointments to the tomb: maybe helpless, maybe frightened, showing up in the dark and just trying to do the best with what we have.

But it is at that tomb, in that garden, where the women will receive the news that Jesus is risen—and with him, the entire community of creation.

Imbued with the promise of that Easter strength, knowing and believing that death will not have the last word, that we are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song—what stones can we roll away? What stones will we roll away?

In one of our Lenten readings, Isaiah 58, the prophet said:

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
   releasing those bound unjustly,
   untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
   breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
   sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
   and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
   and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
   and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
   you shall cry for help, and [God] will say: Here I am!

Beloved of God, we are called to a project of resurrection and liberation in which we are not alone. The prophet changes the paradigm from an individual experience of mourning and penance to a communal project of change, healing, and solidarity. Jesus changes the paradigm from death to life and rebirth. As in a garden, life arises from what can seem like a continual state of death. And we are called, during these last few days of Lent, and in the Easter season that follows, to breathe life into works of justice: not to deny or ignore our neighbors, human and nonhuman—“not to turn our back on our own.” God will be with us in this work.

Guided by the Spirit, we are called to a prophetic vision that may seem as impossible as resurrection in the midst of what seems like an endless Good Friday or Holy Saturday. A vision in which we all share together in table fellowship, working in peace and fierce love and tenderness to heal and nurture and sustain the whole community of creation.

Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron Valley to where there was a garden.

He is waiting for us: waiting to pray with us, to watch with us, to share our pain, our hope, and our struggle, waiting to turn the world upside down…and begin a new life with us.

Today, let us seek and find him there.  

Alyssa Moore (she/her/hers or they/them/theirs). Since a young age, Alyssa’s love of animals and her vibrant experience of parish life have been her greatest joys, as well as tremendous sources of mission and motivation. She is a Catholic from Berkeley, CA, currently studying for a Master of Divinity degree at Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology (JST), and her CreatureKind fellowship will fulfill her degree’s field education requirements for this year. Alyssa has helped organize discussions with her JST theological community about the sentience and sacredness of farmed animals, and about how care for God’s nonhuman creation can intersect with other local and global issues. She is eager to continue to grow in discipleship as part of CreatureKind’s thoughtful, prayerful, and essential work for all of God’s creation.

Fasting from Injustice, Feasting in Freedom

by Alyssa Moore

I identify as Catholic, but until I began to study theology at a Jesuit university, I knew few other Catholics or practicing Christians my age. Among those vaguely familiar with Catholicism, a few common factoids floated around: we make a huge deal about “the holy wafer thing” at church (we do); women and queer people are restricted from taking on leadership roles (alas, usually true); we tend to have big families (at least historically); and—this was the most frequent one—we don’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent. 

For me, already an herbivore from the time I was old enough to begin fasting, this last one didn’t seem like a big deal. (It did provoke a few theological debates about whether or not Gardein chickenless chick’n nuggets, being made of plants, were acceptable Friday fare.) But I became increasingly aware that, to both Catholic and non-Catholic/Christian acquaintances alike, abstaining from meat was something unusual, something that set our tradition apart. 

I’ve been interested to discover that when you ask Catholics what this practice is all about, few are able to articulate a reason right away. Among those who attempt to, you get a wide variety of answers, some of them slightly unsettling. “It’s an act of self-discipline.” “It’s a way to remember your total dependence on God to provide for your needs.” “It’s a reminder that the mind and soul are more important than the body.” “It’s a way of respecting Christ’s ‘flesh sacrifice’ by not partaking in other ‘flesh sacrifices.’” “It’s a means of practicing obedience to the Church!” “I’m not sure, I’m not even really Catholic anymore, but my Irish grandmother would be horrified if I didn’t do it.”  

Strangely, no one thinks to suggest that we are fasting from an everyday act of violence and indifference: towards animals, towards creation, towards our neighbors. If they did, we might begin to ponder why we only do this for a few days out of the year. 

As an animal lover by nature, and an environmental scientist by training, I have always been frustrated by my church’s lack of engagement with animal protection and environmental justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church goes so far as to argue that “we can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point,” suggesting that each individual animal being and species, constantly upheld by the love, care, and affection of their Creator, is a unique manifestation of God’s presence and characteristics. (1) It repeatedly describes animals and other forms of nonhuman creation as living revelation, imploring Catholics to remember that animals have their own purpose, value, and trinitarian destiny entirely apart from their “usefulness” to human beings. It emphasizes on multiple occasions that it is “contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly,” and preaches that animals should be treated with kindness, mercy, and restraint—both for their own sake, and because of their relationship with the Creator. (2) And, as we know—as governing bodies like the UN and IPCC are all but begging us to realize—our exploitation of animals on an industrial scale has devastating consequences for our health and the health of our planet. (3)

What does fasting mean if after we celebrate Christ’s resurrection we return to the daily sacrificing and killing of animal bodies—an endless Good Friday for God’s revelatory, beloved nonhuman creation?  

A parable of sorts: I worked for a while as an administrative assistant at my Jesuit Catholic university, doing general office work and helping prep for catered business events. While almost all of the school’s student gatherings were vegan or vegetarian events, apparently our sustainability scruples got set aside for faculty, donor, and board meetings, which always involved at least one kind of meat or fish: steak, ham, or various kinds of poultry. I was always bothered by this inconsistency, but conscious of the fact that I was an easily replaceable student worker, not in a good position to contest the higher-ups’ menu choices.

Less than forty-eight hours before once such dinner was to take place, I was cc’d on an email saying that the catering order needed to be redone: since it was Ash Wednesday, the faculty could not eat meat, so would it be possible to replace the chicken with salmon, please? 

I would like to think that twenty-odd portions of chicken did not go to waste that night, that these creatures were not slaughtered and butchered just to end up in a dumpster, unused, in a city in which almost twenty percent of residents are food insecure—all in the name of a more “appropriate” fish dinner. (4)

I would like to think that. Unfortunately, I don’t think that was the case. 

And it’s not just animal creation that suffers because of our shortsightedness around food.  

On March 2, 1980, less than a month before he was murdered while saying Mass, the Salvadoran martyr and saint Monseñor Óscar Romero proclaimed from the pulpit: “Lenten fasting is not the same thing in those lands where people eat well as is a Lent among our third-world peoples, undernourished as they are, living in a perpetual Lent, always fasting.” (5) In the global north, we have normalized the fact that our food consumption (of animal products and otherwise) comes at the cost of oppression and injustice elsewhere. In San Romero’s native Central America, for example, the United States helped plan and execute a 1954 coup overthrowing Guatemala’s democratically elected president, sparking a civil war in which 200,000 Guatemalan people, primarily indigenous citizens, were killed. Why? The US desire for cheap tropical fruit. The Guatemalan president had proposed land reforms which would have threatened the global fruit conglomerate United Fruit Co., now known as Chiquita Brands International. (6) In South America, cattle ranching, largely driven by the US demand for cheap beef, is currently the leading cause of deforestation in every single Amazon country. This demand accounts for 80% of deforestation rates as of 2015 with devastating consequences for indigenous communities whose land is polluted, burned, deforested, and even seized outright for ranchland. (7)

Many of us live a “perpetual Lent” in wealthy countries as well, forced into frequent fasting by income inequality, increasing cost of living, and lack of access to nutritious food. A few blocks to the south of our graduate theological campus lies the University of California, Berkeley, arguably one of the most well-regarded universities in the nation. Even pre-pandemic, 44% of undergraduate students and 26% of graduate students in the UC system described themselves as food insecure, meaning they had to eat less, or experienced periods of disrupted eating, due to a lack of resources. (8) In Alameda County more broadly, at least one in five people source food from food banks in order to make ends meet. Two thirds of food bank clients are children and seniors, and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by hunger and food insecurity. Nationwide, households of color, especially Black and Latinx households, are approximately twice as likely to experience hunger as white households. (9)

What does fasting mean, when our everyday meals come at the cost of colonialism, imperialism, oppression, starvation? 

What does fasting mean, in the midst of so much hunger and injustice? 

Pondering all of this, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that we must radically reimagine what we think of as “fasting,” seeking to rediscover the spirit of the act rather than just conforming to established practice. The Bible and its many prophets and visionaries model this for us. On the first Friday of Lent, we hear the words of Isaiah 58: 

Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits,

    and drive all your laborers.

Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting,

    striking with wicked claw.

Would that today you might fast

    so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish,

    of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed

    and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast,

    a day acceptable to the LORD?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

    releasing those bound unjustly,

    untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed,

    breaking every yoke;

Sharing your bread with the hungry,

    sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;

Clothing the naked when you see them,

    and not turning your back on your own.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

    and your wound shall quickly be healed;

Your vindication shall go before you,

    and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,

    you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

What strikes me is that the prophet changes the paradigm from restriction to liberation—from an individual experience of mourning and penance to a communal project of change, healing, and solidarity. Our Lenten requirement is not sackcloth, ashes, and self-denial, but the explicit challenge not to deny or ignore our neighbors, human and nonhuman—“not turning our back on our own.” 

Father Greg Boyle, SJ, writes: 

Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, says, ‘How narrow is the gate that leads to life.’ Mistakenly, I think, we’ve come to believe that this is about restriction. The way is narrow. But it really wants us to see that narrowness is the way […] Our choice is not to focus on the narrow, but to narrow our focus. The gate that leads to life is not about restriction at all. It is about an entry into the expansive. (10)

What could fasting mean, if undertaken as part of an expansive community of creation? A community of solidarity directed towards a shared vision of justice? A community dedicated not just to “restricting” ourselves or abstaining from evil things for a few Fridays each year, but instead dedicated to breaking down structures of sin and replacing them with new patterns of love, equity, and justice? 

Speaking for myself, I am coming to see the act of fasting not so much as a temporary “opt-out” of the daily luxuries to which we’ve become accustomed, but as a daily “opt-in” to new choices, new ways of being, which build and strengthen bonds of connection and mutual love. Lent, then, becomes a privileged season to put into practice our responsibility to our fellow worshippers of the Creator, human and nonhuman alike, so that we may daily live the resurrection for which we’re preparing. Fasting from injustice helps us to prepare a glorious feast of liberation, justice, and love, to be shared and celebrated with all of creation. 

As individuals, and as a Church, we have a lot of work to do. We will need radical change in our power structures, our praxis, our ways of relating to one another. We will need an ethics of solidarity and inclusion, casting aside discriminatory practices, making reparation to those we have harmed. It will not be an easy task. But it is undoubtedly a worthy one, and can even be a joyful one, through which we might become a people that can be known and know themselves, in the words of Tertullian, by how they love one another. 

Alyssa Moore (she/her/hers) is a CreatureKind Fellow. Since a young age, Alyssa’s love of animals and her vibrant experience of parish life have been her greatest joys, as well as tremendous sources of mission and motivation. She is a Catholic from Berkeley, CA, currently studying for a Master of Divinity degree at Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology (JST).

Notes:

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, ed. Joseph Ratzinger. Paragraph 40.

2. CCC, paragraph 2418. 

3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/03/plant-based-diets-crucial-to-saving-global-wildlife-says-report; https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/03/ipcc-land-use-food-production-key-to-climate-crisis-leaked-report

4. https://berkeleyfoodnetwork.org/our-work/

5. https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/holidays/meditations-for-lent/reflections-for-lent

6. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-48638209

7. https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching; https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/brazil-halt-illegal-cattle-farms-fuelling-amazon-rainforest-destruction/

8. https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/08/15/new-semester-new-efforts-to-fight-student-hunger/

9. https://www.accfb.org/impact/by-the-numbers/; https://alliancetoendhunger.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Hill-advocacy-fact-sheet__HUNGER-IS-A-RACIAL-EQUITY-ISSUE_Alliance-to-End-Hunger.pdf

10. Boyle, Gregory. Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (pp. 31-32). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

Hearty Ways to Start Your Day in DefaultVeg Style

by Megan Grigorian

We’re well into the year, and I’ve been leaning heavily into hearty, delicious breakfasts to sustain me through the cold winter months that are now upon us in the US. Whether you prefer a light start to the day, or a heavier meal in the morning, there are DefaultVeg options for all your taste and palate desires. These meals will surely jazz up your breakfast routine and will work for both those who are well-acquainted with DefaultVeg and those who are just beginning to dip their toes. (You can learn more about the tenets of our DefaultVeg program here.) 

Lets dig in.

Photo: Megan Grigorian

Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal with Coconut-Walnut Crumble 

Oatmeal is a DefaultVeg staple because it contains a ton of nutrients and is very versatile. This satisfyingly sweet, nutty oatmeal melds together rich flavors from pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg with a thick finish from maple syrup and coconut oil. Nisha Vora brings us this recipe from her debut cookbook The Vegan Instant Pot. Use it to feed a crowd, or save the yummy leftovers to heat up during the week. Instant cookers can be used for developing flavor and saving time, but they’re not required. You can also simmer the dish slowly on the stovetop. 

Photo: Megan Grigorian

Jalapeno Hush Puppies with Honey Butter

Hush Puppies might not be on everyone’s breakfast table, but I assure you they are a tasty, fluffy accompaniment to any meal, any time of day. I serve these with a protein filled scramble like the one featured below, and it’s always a hit! These little flavor bombs are a cross between a cornbread, a muffin, and a savory doughnut. The key is using the plant-based version of buttermilk, which you can get from combining soy milk or almond milk with vinegar or lemon juice. Don’t forget to serve some honey butter on the side to slather on your hush puppies for the perfect bite. I just mix agave syrup in with softened Earth Balance butter. My go-to recipe for hush puppies is from Jenne Clairborne’s book Sweet Potato Soul, and you can find the recipe here. 

Photo: Megan Grigorian

Scramble 

If you’re just starting out on DefaultVeg, and beginning to substitute products like eggs, JUSTEgg scramble is a plant-based alternative that offers flavor notes similar to scrambled eggs. JUST Egg, which can be found in many grocery store chains right next to the eggs, imitates the consistency of chicken eggs brilliantly by using mung beans. It can be cooked exactly as you would eggs, and it also works for baking. If you can’t find JUSTEgg just yet, tofu is a perfectly delicious substitute. For years, tofu was (and still is) my go-to product for a breakfast scramble packed with veggies and spices. Drain, press, and crumble the tofu block into a saute pan over medium heat with a tablespoon of oil. Also, add all the spices and veggies (like shallots and red peppers) you like. Nutritional yeast is a good addition to your scramble if you like that cheesy flavor. This comes together in 20 minutes or less and is loved by eaters all over the plant-based spectrum. 

Image from Sweet Potato Soul

Chicken and Waffles 

Chicken and waffles is a special, knock-your-socks off kind of breakfast (or brunch) that can be easily replicated using DefaultVeg ingredients: crunchy chicken substitute, over slightly sweet fluffy waffles, all slathered in syrup and topped with a couple dashes of hot sauce. What combines sweet and savory better? There are many ways to approach this dish depending on the amount of time and work you want to put into your meal. If you’re up for making everything from scratch, Sweet Potato Soul gives simple and detailed instructions to bring these components together (available in her fantastic book and online here). For some shortcuts, there are plant-based chicken options available in the freezer section of your grocery store, and my favorite brand of drumsticks are available online from May Wah. I’ve also worn out my copy of The Global Vegan Waffle Cookbook, which has every flavor of waffle you can imagine, plus the simple ingredients needed to mix up and add to your waffle iron. 

Other options for making breakfast DefaultVeg

If you prefer a grab-and-go breakfast, there are so many options: toast with almond butter, smashed avocados and red pepper flakes, fruit smoothies with soy milk and a drizzle of agave, or several brands of frozen breakfast burritos, which contain no animal products and can be found in grocery stores.

I hope this gives you some delicious DefaultVeg ideas to make the start of your day and year satisfying. Let these recipes sustain you during this cold season (at least in the Northern Hemisphere!) and warm you from the inside out. Let us know what your favorite breakfast is in the comments. Happy tasting!  

Megan Grigorian is a project consultant with CreatureKind.

"For what must the church repent and how?"

A Lent Sermon for Ash Wednesday, 2021
by Rev. Aline Silva

“God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.’” (Gen 9.12-13, NRSV)

Leader: The Word of the Lord for all CreatureKind. 

All: Thanks be to God

And we are told that God so loved that earth, this earth, that God took on human flesh, with all its joys, sorrows, exhilarations, and pains. 

I invite you to breathe in with me. And in breathing out, name the pains and sins we have witnessed this year. 

• Racially-motivated, state-sanctioned violence against our Black, brown, and Indigenous kin. 

• An attempted coup, following years of voter suppression and dismantling of basic democratic protections. 

• Acts of hate perpetrated against our Asian siblings, blamed wholesale for a virus caused by capital demand. 

• Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples who contracted and died from COVID at high rates, and yet receive vaccinations at low ones. 

Touch your hearts and breathe in with me.

And in breathing out—in this season of reminding ourselves why God so loved this very earth—in that breathing out, name the mourning and the loss of lives caused by our industrialized, colonized food systems. 

• Slaughterhouse, food-plant, farm, and food-service workers around the world were forced to work in unsafe conditions during a global pandemic and sentenced to die because of it. 

• Indigenous peoples murdered, the land they steward stolen to make way for the production of animal flesh to be exported and consumed by the wealthy in other countries. 

• Long lines at food banks. Empty bellies for some while a select and privileged few reap unfathomable financial rewards. Money earned on the backs of the sick, suffering, and often times disabled. 

• Animals—fellow worshippers of the enfleshed God—pushed to extinction by human activity or bred, confined, raped and mutilated on factory farms. 

• Small farmers taking their lives in record numbers after being pushed out of a system dominated by a few powerful corporations. 

Beloved, we seem to have broken that Genesis covenant with our Creator, a covenant to care for one another, the earth, and non-human creatures. And so we must ask, where and with whom does God’s covenant need to be restored this Lent? This is work that we must do individually and collectively, to examine our personal and our communal complicity with broken systems and ways of being that cause so many in God’s beloved community to suffer rather than flourish. 

We seem to have allowed ourselves as humans to take an unrightful place in the cosmos, considering ourselves a little less than angels. Conquering and Colonizing the world, extracting and maximizing its “resources” to the great disservice of all creation. What must we change to ensure God’s covenant, salvation, and liberation is accessible to the whole world, the chickens and the stars?

Beloveds, breathe in with me. Breathe in the covenant, salvation, and liberation that the God who loves the world has for us all. 

Now breathe out fear and shame. For the enfleshed God is also our protector, liberator, and co-Creator of this beloved world. 

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” (Mark 1:12-13, NRSV)

How might we follow God—Liberator, Protector, Creator—into the wilderness? Can we humble ourselves enough to learn not only from the earth but the animals themselves, like Adam in the garden or Jesus in the wilderness? 

For too many of us, entering the wilderness, encountering, and learning from animals is a physical impossibility. Centuries of Colonization and conquering has caused deforestation, displacement of First Peoples, and the desecration of this earth. The EuroAmerican appetite for cheap food and cheap meat, produced in huge quantities at very little cost has created a crisis of climate refugees, food apartheid, and health disparities around the globe. 

So, to follow God into the wilderness, we must repent from industrial farming and its death-dealing ways. 

Together, we confess:

• We have perpetuated 500 years of food apartheid.

• We have forced enslaved peoples to displace natives to grow food for the wealthy few. 

• We have caused global pandemics and untold death, beginning with the first pandemic of a colonial diet and the model of consumerism and capitalist demand. 

• We have subsidized multi-billion dollar agribusinesses while small, ethical farmers suffer. We have contributed to their depression and suicide. 

• We have systematically denied access to land for BIPOC farmers. 

• We have failed to protect or walk with animals. We breed and slaughter them by the billions, forgetting that each life is precious to God. 

• We put factory farms and slaughterhouses in BIPOC communities, polluting their air and water, and creating generations of health crises. 

• Our industrial fishing practices have stripped the ocean of life. 

We confess, and we repent with our actions. 

We repent by joining Jesus in the wilderness of the unknown, and letting the wilderness herself guide us and we commit to listening and learning from First Peoples, whose relationship with the earth and non-humans has been instrumental in preserving their integrity and diversity. 

We repent by being willing and open to learning from other-than-human animals. We commit to remembering that humans are not the pinnacle of creation and that our interconnectedness is the key to our very existence, survival, and flourishing. 

We repent by being careful consumers of the earth’s abundance. We commit to getting to know our food growers and handlers; to choosing to eat plants instead of animals as often as we can; to remembering that every created being is beloved by God, and to treating those beings accordingly; to advocating for policies and practices that foster flourishing, equity, and liberation for all. 

Fam, this Lent, might we return to the dirt, this very earth, and join Jesus in considering this covenant and life abundant? 

May it be so. 

---

Rev. Aline (Ah-lee-nee) Silva (she/her/hers) serves as the co-Director of CreatureKind, an international non-profit leading Christians in new ways of thinking about the Christian Faith and Farmed Animal Welfare.  Prior to coming to CreatureKind, Aline served for over a decade as a local parish pastor of rural and farming populations in Kansas, Missouri, and Colorado. Aline shares herself as a queer, Black & Indigenous immigrant of Brasil to the US. Aline chooses not to eat non-human animals, her fellow-worshippers of God. Aline is a pastor, an excellent preacher, and a life coach. You can most often find her laughing out loud, twerking, and sharing her life with her emotional support pup and main squeeze, Paçoca (pah-saw-kah). You can learn about Aline and her work by following CreatureKind on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. She writes today from the unceded lands of the Tequesta, Taino, and Seminole peoples, namedly South Florida, USA.

Crying over Spilt Milk

by Lee Palumbo

While chatting with a friend one day about the high volume of antibiotics and other nasty ingredients found in today’s cows’ milk, he asked me, “So why do you care what others eat or drink?”

I cried.

I often cry over this subject. I struggle to maintain calm composure as my friends and family carry on with the traditional western, colonial diet composed of other living creatures’ excretions and remains. I cry because I feel like a helpless bystander, just watching everyone feed themselves, each other, and their children – all of whom trust that all is well with the food system and that all is well on the land where that food is grown.

But it’s not.

I live on the land now called Australia, a phrase created by Aboriginal leader, speaker, writer, and poet and Wakka Wakka descendent, Brooke Prentis. I am an immigrant from the United Kingdom and have had all the privileges that come with being European, middle class, and educated. I am one of the many second peoples on this land, a colonial settler, living on land that has irrevocably changed since its colonial occupation in 1786.

On this land, we encounter the oldest living civilisation on the planet.[1] These first peoples have been the custodians of this land from the beginning. Contrary to colonial mythology, they were not wandering nomads. These peoples were farmers who developed practices that were complex, sophisticated, and unique to the region. They were true custodians from the very first Dreamtime creation story of the land given to them by the Creator. They developed complex and sustainable aquaculture systems, grain cultivation, and established settlements.[2] British colonials often recorded details of these farming practices and structures before destroying them, and the people who perfected them, to make way for their own imported practices and livestock farming from Europe. The land was cleared for newly arrived settlers to raise cattle on the stolen land with appropriated food and farming practices.  

Colonial farming practices degraded the landscape and created what we know today as landscape with endangered wild species affected by deforestation and devastating bushfires. Bruce Pascoe, a Yuin indigenous elder explains and documents this brilliantly in his well-researched book Dark Emu. First peoples had a relationship with other creatures and a deep connection to the land. It is this connection that sustained the land and the community for over 60,000 years since the discovery of the first settlement of humans on Arnhem land in the northern region of the continent.[3] This connection was interrupted when colonisers decided to farm animals.

Sheep and cattle were imported with the first fleet and grazed on much of the native vegetation, deforesting the land to grow more feed crops. The greed of pastoralists, growing herds every year since, created mega industrial farms now producing more farmed animals than we need. We have become the third largest exporter of cows on the planet and yet our small population ranks fifty-fifth in the world. The shameful practice of live exports continues from this country, subjecting animals to cruel and terrifying conditions without food or water from continent to continent for days. Wealth is created by taking land from first peoples, enslaving them to work on the land and in the homes of pastoralists, and punishing anyone who opposed them. This country is wealthy, and the non-aboriginal population have an amazingly privileged life. The inequity is staggering.

The nation officially celebrates Australia Day on the 26th of January, to mark the arrival of the first fleet to these lands, which is also the start of the genocide – a day of deep sorrow and pain for first peoples. Armed with guns and carrying devastating diseases such as smallpox and other pandemics never before recorded amongst the people, the colonisers claimed land for themselves through the first wave, mass killings with firearms, rape, enslavement and poisoning of waterways, destroying whole clans and peaceful communities as they made their way inland from the coast. Then again through the second wave of despair, came alcoholism and the systematic removal of children from first families.[4] The church did little to protect the people, setting up missions for the remnant left and training stolen children into domestic slavery under the guise of adoption. Even before the church’s arrival on these shores, it had been backing colonial expansionism and imperialism. On this land the church worked alongside the government, facilitating the genocide and enslavement of indigenous people through segregation and so-called protection and assimilation policies. To put it simply the Christian church has systematically contributed to racism against first peoples from the first fleet.[5] We cannot celebrate a church that destroys, displaces, steals, and renames places, humans, and non-humans for the sake of expansion and profitability.

So, you see. All is definitely not right with the land and the food system now implemented.

It is unjust that unpaid farm workers strategically recruited from the aboriginal communities have yet to be paid reparations. It is unjust that foreigners and settlers on this land can farm animals and ship them live without food or water, and without consideration for climate or altitude shifts. It is unjust that this system continues to displace first peoples, depriving them of their sustainable farming practices, while also causing food apartheid and health disparities. It is unjust that we cause so much pain and suffering to those with whom we are meant to coexist and co-create under the great southern skies of the same Creator.

I live on a land with deep wounds, still unresolved from a violent occupation, and a desperate need for reparations so as to move toward reconciliation. All is not well with our land, and so much of that stems from our colonial farming practices.

As followers of the nonviolent Messiah, Jesus, is it possible for us to practice justice and peace via the foods we consume?  How can the food on my table reflect the Good News of the Creator to all beings?

I am no longer part of the mainstream church, but I belong to a cohousing group of three families, attempting to live alongside each other and the community hoping to reflect the ways of Jesus. We follow monastic rhythms together through set times for prayer, food, and partying with our neighbours, and we offer hospitality at every opportunity. As people who follow the teachings of Jesus, we come from a long history of radical hospitality, Jesus often met with others over food and healing. The disciples relied on the hospitality of others to live. The early church makers were renowned for it, and that hospitality should extend to all, not just our friends (Luke 14:12).  Local plant-based foods are an inclusive, healthy, and hospitable choice, rather than the colonial diet introduced to our plates via the destruction of land, humans, and other creatures.

So, yes, I cry over milk. Milk that is drunk and milk that is spilt, I cry for a land and a people who have suffered greatly just for a roast dinner or a big mac, or even a sausage on the “barbie.”  

I look at my 6-year-old granddaughter, and I wonder what kind of life she will have in the future: will there still be fish in the sea, koalas in gumtrees and a liveable climate to allow her outdoors? Will she, too, cry over the milk? Or will she live in world where suffering is no longer required in order to obtain milk? She understands why we do not eat animals as food and why we abstain from milk meant for calves, but she does not understand why others consume such things. I am a preachy vegan. My friends laugh when I confess. But it is important to follow what breaks our hearts and makes us cry. It is the only way we can address the streams of oppression that contort our world and create dis-ease amongst us. I am thankful that I am not alone with this challenge, and encouraged by the work of CreatureKind, and fellow activists across the planet.

Lee Palumbo (she/her/hers) is a CreatureKind Fellow. She and her family live and work outside Melbourne in a cohousing community development. They are members of a missional based faith community, an initiative of the Baptist Union Victoria, aimed at co-creating connections and neighborliness in the newly built township. Lee also manages the family coffee roastery, grows some food, and assists with a social enterprise café in the neighbourhood. Lee has a Bachelor of Theology from Kingsley Wesleyan Methodist College (Sydney College of Divinity) and a Masters in Sustainable Community Development from Monash University. In recent years she has developed an interest in advocacy for animals, through considering how best to respond to our mandate to care for creation, and work towards the restoration of all things. Lee’s work with CreatureKind seeks to explore an Australian perspective about how people of faith can contribute to a truly sustainable food system and a better life for farmed animals through a deeper understanding of current animal agriculture.

[1] Malaspinas, AS., Westaway, M., Muller, C. et al. A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia. Nature 538, 207–214 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18299

[2] Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu. Aboriginal Australia and the birth of Agriculture. Melbourne : Scribe Publications, 2018.

[3]https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/the-spread-of-people-to-australia/

[4] Harris, John. “Hiding the Bodies: the Myth of the Humane Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia.” Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, pp. 79–104. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24054261. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.

[5] Pattell-Gray, A. The Great White Flood. Racism in Australia. Atlanta, Ga. : Scholars Press, 1998

Margaret’s Favourite Ingredient This Month: Chickpea Flour (also called besan or gram flour)

by Margaret B. Adam

Chickpea flour is high in protein, naturally gluten-free, and an (improbable but effective) egg replacement in many recipes. With a bag of chickpea flour in your cupboard, you can transform a few lonely vegetables into an easy, appealing, and satisfying meal. 

With some chickpea flour, water, and a cup or two of assorted vegetables, you can whip together at least three, easy, new and different dinners.

I’ve been experimenting with chickpea flour for a while. The results are always tasty and filling, and there’s lots of room for variation.

The Basics: Whisk together 1 cup of chickpea flour, 1 cup of water, 1 teaspoon baking powder. Cook on a griddle or in the oven. Eat.  

Here are examples of my current favourite chickpea flour meals. You can decide what vegetables and seasonings you’d like to use, depending on your tastebuds and the contents of your fridge. 

Savoury Chickpea Flour Crepes

Vegetable filling: about 2 cups assorted sautéed vegetables. For example: Sauté diced onion, minced garlic, sliced zucchini, chopped sweet pepper. Season with salt and pepper, basil and oregano. Set to the side.

Chickpea flour mix: Whisk together 1 cup chickpea flour, 1 cup water, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt. When all the lumps are gone, check to see that the consistency is pretty runny, not thick.

Cook crepes: Heat a little oil in a skillet, pour in some chickpea flour mix—just enough to cover the skillet with a thin layer. When the crepe starts to show bubbles, lift slightly with a spatula to see that the underside is starting to turn light brown. Then carefully flip the crepe over. If the crepe is thin enough, it should be cooked through a couple of minutes after flipping. If it’s thicker, try pressing down with the spatula; if some batter shows, give it a bit more time. Pile the crepes on a plate as you make them.

Reheat: Warm the vegetables in the microwave. Warm crepes in the microwave if needed. 

Serve: Set a crepe on a plate, place about ¼ cup vegetables inside. Fold over the crepe or roll it up.  

Makes 2-6, depending on how thick the batter is and how generously you stuff the crepes.

Refrigerate any leftover crepes. Roll one up and eat it cold as quick snack, or stuff with something else.

See below for Options and Variations.

Chickpea Flour Vegetable Patties

Vegetable: about 2 cups assorted. For example: Sauté diced onion, minced garlic, sliced zucchini, chopped sweet pepper. Season with salt and pepper, basil and oregano. Add a can of chickpeas. Set to the side.

Chickpea flour mix: Whisk together 1 cup chickpea flour, ¾ cup water, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt. When all the lumps are gone, check to see that the consistency is more think than runny, but still very easily pourable. 

Combine: vegetables and batter.

Sauté: Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a skillet. Place 5 ladle scoops in the heated skillet, to make 5 patties. (If the batter is so runny that the patties don’t keep a shape, whisk 2 tablespoons of chickpea flour with 1 tablespoon of water and mix into the batter for the next skillet.) Check the patties by pressing with a spatula. If some batter bubbles up, keep cooking on the first side. Then flip the patties until done (check for batter bubbles). The batter will make approximately 15, depending on how many vegetables in the mix and on the size of the patties.

Serve: Hot or cold. 

See below for Options and Variations.

Chickpea Flour Pan Bake

NOTE: MUST COOL 1-2 HOURS BEFORE EATING. This pan bake needs to cool well before serving, in order to set. Once the center is firm, reheat for serving (or eat cold). Before it is set, it’s a sloppy, gooey mess.  

Pan: 8x8 or a larger. 

Vegetable filling: about 2 cups assorted. For example: Sauté diced onion, minced garlic, sliced zucchini, chopped sweet pepper. Season with salt and pepper, basil and oregano. Add a can of chickpeas. Set to the side.

Chickpea mixture: Whisk together 1 cup chickpea flour, ¾ cup water, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt. When all the lumps are gone, check to see that the consistency is a bit thicker than runny, but still easily pourable. 

Combine vegetables and batter. Stir just enough to mix together evenly. 

Bake: Pour the combined ingredients into a generously oiled pan. 

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes.

Cool to set, before serving. 

Chickpea Flour Quiche

The Gourmet Vegan offers a great recipe for a quiche. I’ve tried it (with some vegetable variation) and it was fabulous!

See below for Options and Variations.

Options and Variations

Use your imagination and whatever you have at hand!

Alternative/Additional Vegetables Ideas:

• Thinly sliced small potatoes, or small cubes of larger potatoes

• Thinly sliced carrots or other root vegetables

• Tomato slices or chunks

• Brussels sprouts, quartered

• Green beans, spinach, mushrooms, corn, broccoli, cauliflower

• Also:

  • Chickpeas 

  • Lightly toasted pine nuts or sliced almonds 

Seasoning ideas:

• Add to the crepe batter: ¼ cup very finely chopped onion/garlic/pepper.

• Add to the veg and/or batter: fresh or dried basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage. 

• Add a curry mix, turmeric and cumin, cayenne, coriander, ginger, etc.

• Top with faux bacon bits

Sauce ideas (inside and on top of a crepe, on top of pancakes/pan bakes/quiches):

• Tomato sauce (spaghetti sauce from a jar?)

• Salsa

• Humus 

• Any leftover sauce from your fridge

• Instant dressing

• Whisk together some oil, lemon juice, mustard, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper.

• Peanut Sauce: Add 2 tablespoons boiling water to ¼ cup peanut butter, almond butter, or tahini. Stir thoroughly with a fork. Add 1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce, ½ teaspoon maple syrup, a dash of lemon juice, and ½ teaspoon cayenne. Stir well. Adjust the mixture to taste and pourable consistency by adding a little more one or all of the above, as needed. 

• Savoury cashew cream: Soak ½ cup raw, unsalted, cashews overnight. When well soaked, they should give way when you press between your fingers. Combine with ½ cup water, a little salt, any additional herbs or seasonings you like. Stir some of the cream into the vegetable mix, warm the rest and pour on top.