Finding creaturely kinship: how stumbling on Genesis 9 shaped my theology of food

April 11, 2023 Guest User

Written by Liesl Stewart

I remember eating my last hamburger when I was fourteen years old. As I chewed, I had a firm and clear knowing: this is the last hamburger I will ever eat. That was forty years ago, and I’ve never eaten one since. I started to move away from consuming meat because somehow I had begun losing the taste for its meatiness, and I couldn’t disassociate the food I was putting in my mouth from the farmed animals from which I knew it came.

Chicken meat was hard for me to stop eating because I was often the lone vegetarian eating with other people, and I never wanted to seem burdensome or rude. If I were a guest at someone else’s table, they would often serve me chicken when they heard I was a vegetarian. I never really wanted to eat it, but the taste wasn’t as aggressively meaty as pork, lamb, or beef, so I was able to swallow down a few bites. This was a common experience for me for the first decades that I was a vegetarian. Thankfully, I’ve since learned how to respectfully stand firm in my wish to avoid eating meat.¹ I’ve found in the last decade, omnivorous hosts are far more willing and confident to offer vegetarian dishes. I’ve experienced vegetarianism becoming more normalized in recent years, so socializing as a vegetarian is, wonderfully, much easier than it used to be.

More precisely, I’ve long been a pescetarian–a vegetarian who also eats seafood. (When I first heard the term from friends newly describing themselves as pescetarians, I thought they’d joined some kind of strange eco-cult!) Now forty years on, I still live as a pescetarian, set on a trajectory that arcs more in the direction of plant-based eating with every year I live. I eat much less fish and dairy now than I used to. My relationship with the consumption of animal-based foods is not fixed; I’m constantly renegotiating the terms of my food choices based on what I have learned about the food system, the foods I have access to, and my developing values. I’ve seen similar shifts in my family members’ diets.

Earlier in life, I didn’t have a theological basis for my choice to stop eating meat. I began forming this theology sometime in my thirties when I stumbled across Gen 9:3-4. When making a covenant with Noah after the flood, God seems to give humankind permission to eat animals.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (NSRV-UE)

What?! Were people not supposed to eat animals before? I went back to the original Creation accounts at the beginning of Genesis. Yes, there it’s written:

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1: 29-31b NRSV-UE)

“In the beginning,” to live fully liberated as human animals in reverent connection with the triune God and the rest of Creation, humans were meant to feast upon the bounty of the plant kingdom, but not the animal kingdom. Author Judith Barad, a philosophy and women’s studies academic, reflects: “This is the way God intended humans to live: in a world full of harmony between human life and animal life, a world in which violence has no place. Examining the new creation, including vegetarian humans, God found it ‘very good.’”²

God affirms this again, when, as Eve and Adam were banished from Eden, God told Adam to “eat the plants of the field” (Gen 3:18). It wasn’t until Noah’s storyline, when God made a new covenant between God and humankind, that animal creatures were permitted to be killed and eaten. Judith Barad has pointed out that, in Genesis 3, the original covenant God made was with both humans and non-human animals, and that it is written six times for emphasis. “There is a kinship between humans and other sentient beings, a kinship which is made explicit in the covenant.”³

I don’t know why God offered this permission, nor is it my intention to interpret these verses and declare God’s edicts in this blog. There are different approaches to reading the first chapters of Genesis. For me, I believe that the genre is story–specifically, Creation and covenantal stories–which are often told using poetry. Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter suggests the Creation accounts in Genesis use liturgical poetry, which “invites us to see Creation through a divine perception that encourages a healthy imagination to think and feel in ways that promote relationality and interdependence.”⁴

However we approach Scripture, the Genesis Creation stories paint a rich and colorful picture of God’s unending love for Creation, including human and non-human animals. Any permission to use other creatures for food has to be viewed in light of God’s present and continuous love for created beings, and in terms of God’s mandate to humans to be caretakers of Creation.⁵

My theological formation regarding the kinship of all creatures has continued as I have engaged more and more with nonhuman animals: living with dogs in our family; caring for chickens in our garden; rescuing abandoned fledgling robin-chats and injured pigeons and juvenile hadada ibises; welcoming local birds to our bird feeder; and even marveling at the diversity of insect life I encountered in my garden and my home. I have seen animals emote, communicate, show unique personalities, and bond with human and nonhuman others. I’ve admired their social intelligence. I have cried when they’ve died. (My daughter’s beloved rat, Gandalf, lived the last week of his life sick on my chest or my daughter’s neck. We sobbed our hearts out together when he died, and we still talk about how much we adored that guy.) I’ve even spoken to insects scurrying away from me: “I see your strong instinct for survival, and I respect that life in you!” (Yes, that’s me talking to cockroaches and spiders!)

I’ve come to respect God’s high view of Creation and have stepped away from viewing humankind as the pinnacle or centerpiece of Creation.⁶ I believe the full biblical texts affirm my understanding of this. It’s not at all that I believe human animals aren’t important and beloved by God, but I believe many Christians today miss just how expansive and unending God’s love is for the fullness of Creation. Humans are wired for connection and interdependence with the rest of Creation, and we are given the important work of co-laboring with God, representing God to God’s own Creation.

My theology has also continued to form as I have interacted–through a food-buying collective–with the people who make the food I eat. Through God’s provision, the source of all the food we eat is Creation. My love for Creation has grown as I’ve interacted with producers, learning from them about the complexities of growing and producing food with care given to the land and animals, human and nonhuman. Ecosystems held in balance become fragile when we humans treat Creation as if it’s something to be exploited.

When we examine the treatment of animals used for food in today’s context, how are our fellow creatures faring?

Today, billions of animals are raised and killed in industrialized factory farms for human food. These farmed animals endure miserable lives and cruel deaths. They are crushed under the oppressive weight of industrialized food production. Any values or intentions God has communicated in the Creation accounts or in the covenant with Noah surely do not bless this kind of exploitation and suffering.

The theologies from which we live often begin with questions born out of realities that disturb us. In being disturbed we might be challenged to change the behaviors that are contributing further harm. If we understand that most or all of the meat, dairy, and eggs available at grocery stores come from animals raised in factory farms, will our food choices change as a result? Here are some questions I’ve found helpful to examine how theology might impact our decisions about food choices:

          • Humans and farmed animals are co-created beings, meaning God made us all to exist together in community. If we understand ourselves in this way, how might we respond faithfully through our eating habits?

          • How does your own understanding of God and Creation guide you in deciding what to eat?

          • How has your theology been formed, and how are you able to support your own continued formation?⁷

          • In your context, are there ways that you would want to change your eating habits?

          • If change seems daunting, are there small changes you could make that would help your habits better align with your beliefs?

          • Are there people you trust, or people whose hearts are similarly moved by these issues, with whom you could explore this topic?

          • What small or big practical steps could be taken to reflect God’s caring for Creation?

At CreatureKind we’d love to help you think through ways to engage further. Our DefaultVeg program will help you begin to make some changes that are good and right for your community’s context. Please reach out to us for additional conversation or support.

^{1. If this is still a struggle for you, Laura Hobgood-Oster has a helpful chapter about this (Chapter 7: “Does Christian Hospitality Require that We Eat Meat?”) in the book, A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals, eds. Tripp York and Andy Alexis-Baker (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012). We at CreatureKind are also ready to support you in this process. You can contact us here.↩}
^{2. Judith Barad, “What about the Covenant with Noah?” in A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals, eds. Tripp York and Andy Alexis-Baker (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012), 14↩}
^{3. Judith Barad, “What about the Covenant with Noah?” 19.↩}
^{4. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 2021), p. 89 of Chapter 3, Rakuten Kobo.↩}
^{5. One of the best ways we can help farmed animals is by reducing our consumption of animal products, especially those reared within factory farming systems. There are different ways to do this. We can adopt a plant-based diet altogether, as advocated by the author of this blog; or we can reduce our consumption of animal products, and source what we do consume from the highest welfare providers. ↩}
^{6. Christopher Carter, in his book, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice, discusses in detail how problematic this view is in Chapter 3, the section: “Race, Religion, and the Creation of “The Animal”, p. 55-75, Rakuten Kobo.↩}
^{7. If you would like to learn more about a theology of animal treatment, our CreatureKind website has blogs to help you, as well as other resources. https://www.becreaturekind.org/↩}

CreatureKind Fellows & Friends

March 13, 2023 Guest User

By: Liesl Stewart

Recently, it was my joy to spend time with two friends from CreatureKind’s global community who came from their homes in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, to my city of Cape Town, South Africa. They are both advocates for the kind treatment of animals, and they were in town for an Open Wing Alliance ¹ conference.

Pictured left to right: Liesl Stewart, Linda Ncube, Alfred Sihwa

While Zimbabwe has beautiful freshwater lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, it is a landlocked country, so it was their wish to hang out at some of Cape Town’s many beaches. We had a lovely time together sharing in friendship and our love for Creation. It was clear these two are animal lovers by the many photos they took of dogs walking on the beach!

As part of their advocacy work, they are both connected to CreatureKind through the CreatureKind Fellowship Program. Linda Ncube was a 2021-2022 CreatureKind Fellow, and Alfred Sihwa is a current 2022-2023 fellow. I asked them questions about the impact of the fellowship program on their lives and work.

Linda Ncube (pictured above) completed the yearlong CreatureKind Fellowship Program in May of 2022.

Liesl: What did you value most about your fellowship year?
Linda: What I valued most is that CreatureKind considers every life to matter– every life, whether human or nonhuman. At CreatureKind, every kind of life matters.

Liesl: That was new for you?
Linda: It’s not new but CreatureKind takes it deeper, teaching about a connection between living creatures, with each other and with the shared environment. They bring the fellows together to understand their own environment and surroundings.

Liesl: Were you able to understand your context and your environment better?
Linda: Yeah. Especially for farmed animals. I now understand better what’s happening with them.

Liesl: How have you put what you learned and gained to use in your life?
Linda: For me, it’s not like putting it to use, but it’s living it. It’s not that I try to practice it. CreatureKind taught me in such a way that it’s now within me. I can give you an example: I was traveling in my car with my friends at night. In Zimbabwe, there are a lot of cattle in the road. So we were driving, then from nowhere a cow crosses the road. A calf was following, and we hit it. We heard a bang sound. We knew the car had hit it. So, we stopped and jumped out to see. Two of my friends went to the side of the car to see what had happened to the car. Myself, I went to try to look for the calf. It was dark, so I put on my phone’s torch [flashlight] to try to see what had happened to it. Was it dead? It was so touching to me. The others questioned why I was looking for the calf. “Come and check your car! You’re concerned about the calf when you haven’t even checked what happened to your car!” The calf just has one life. The car, yes, I can buy another one! I can repair it! But the calf has just got one life. After CreatureKind, it just runs within me to have this love for other creatures. (In the end, we couldn't find the calf so I think and hope it wasn’t hurt.)

Liesl: When it comes to farmed animals, what do you think is the biggest need in your context?
Linda: Maybe the biggest need is for people to understand that farmed animals are sentient. They have feelings. When people look at the farmed animals, they just see food or they see an income-generating opportunity, so they don’t consider the way these broiler chickens suffer in battery cages. People don’t know. Just like myself, I didn’t know. But after learning, it made a difference.

Liesl: What is your biggest dream?
Linda: To see my fellow compatriots valuing the lives of animals, to understand that animals have their lives, too. We, humans, are here on earth with animals. They are not here only for us. We are here together.

Liesl: How can your dream become reality?
Linda: The way CreatureKind mixes the Christian faith with the care of animals is a unique way of reaching out to people who believe in Christ. Where I come from, most people are Christians, so giving them a theology that includes caring for animals is the best approach.

Liesl: You spoke about broiler chickens in cages. Is factory farming increasing in Zimbabwe?
Linda: Yeah, in our country the government is promoting battery cages. The government is even giving people loans to purchase cages from China and wherever. So, it’s like we are fighting against the government because the government is busy promoting the use of cages. So, we have a lot of work to try to convince the government. We are trying to change policy at a local level because policy change has to start from within communities.

Liesl: Are other animals being factory-farmed that you’re trying to help?
Linda: Yes, farmed pigs. As Seventh-Day Adventists, we don’t have high regard for pigs. We see them as dirty, we don’t eat them. So I want to fight for them. Before I didn’t love pigs, but now I love them most. So, I’m trying to fight for the pigs.

Alfred Sihwa (pictured below) is a current fellow in the CreatureKind Fellowship Program.

Liesl: How did you find out about CreatureKind?
Alfred: I learned when I went into their website. I realized one of the advocates, Linda Ncube, was already doing her scholarship under CreatureKind. I became interested. I wanted to follow her work and follow what other people were doing because it’s a different approach, after all.

Liesl: How is CreatureKind’s approach different?
Alfred: The CreatureKind way doesn’t judge anyone, and it encourages both theological and traditional ways of dealing with animals. It’s a totally different approach.

Liesl: How is that different than other approaches?
Alfred: It takes people to their roots, focusing on the traditional ways of caring for animals. Everything is incorporated, traditional and theological. It’s not a judgmental approach because it doesn’t differentiate whether you are a Christian believer or a traditional life believer. I also think a focus on the sentience of animals is important so that we can build compassion for animals in[to] people.

Liesl: Why did you decide to become a fellow?
Alfred: As an advocate for animals, I believe in pan-Africanism, in traditional ways of operating.² I would want Africa to do things in a way that is rooted closer to home. Animal welfare in its current form is a new phenomenon in Africa, but we are adopting new strategies from Europe and America. But traditionally there were different ways of respecting and caring for animals that were animal welfare-friendly. When colonization came in, Africans lost their ways of caring for animals. They adopted using battery cages, and they adopted intensive farming methods. It destroyed the way animals were kept, traditionally. Then I realized that even if animal welfare is coming back into focus now, it’s being pushed by the global North, and Africans won’t understand as much as if it started from our traditional ways. So, I thought if I learn from CreatureKind and then go back and do the best ways that are closer to home in talking about animal welfare, it will really make a difference.

Liesl: What are some of the traditional ways you’re talking about?
Alfred: In our traditional ways, there was actually respect for animals. Even when they were doing traditional rituals, animals were given respect. Animals were kept in kraals to care for them.³ Even during slaughter, I remember the rest of the animals were moved out of the kraal so that only the animal being killed was left by itself. The other ones didn’t have to see that animal being killed. There was stunning of some sort for the animal [being] killed, done in a traditional way.

Liesl: It sounds like you think that respect has been lost–why do think this happened?
Alfred: During colonization, African traditional systems were looked down upon.⁴ Actually, people saw Western life as the better one, and they lost their traditions. So, that’s why I joined CreatureKind, so it is possible to restore some traditions.

Liesl: How do you see yourself using what you’re doing this year through the fellowship? Will you be educating people? Offering theology to bring back old traditions?
Alfred: As part of my project, I am looking at traditional meals — how best can they assist in animal welfare? I’ve already done the research. I’m now working on how best the recipes can be done and how can they be shared in a publication. It’s all about diet.⁵ What you eat makes you who you are, so that’s the first thing. From there, I’ll go back to looking at the traditional methods of taking care of animals, and how best that was done [in the past]. After doing this, I’ll go back to the community, church, schools, and everyone, and try and share this knowledge so that everybody really understands where we are coming from and where we are going to promote animal welfare. Then, when we take Western ideas, we could fuse them with traditional ways and have better methods for taking care of animals.

Liesl: So, you are researching traditional recipes that can be made in ways that are more respectful to animals? And then you want to share those more widely with people, and use that to show what’s happening in the food system?
Alfred: Yes. The research that I’ve done is inclusive of animal-based and plant-based recipes because I want to do comparative research. But when I do the publication, I’ll leave out animal-based recipes, because this will actually help the animals more. I’ll bring in the idea of being a vegetarian and/or vegan. This has always been there, but it’s coming now in a Westernized way. I want to re-introduce the traditional ways.

Liesl: So the traditional diet used to be more plant-based?
Alfred: Traditionally, meat was eaten on special occasions. It was not a daily meal. But, we lost that — I say “we” because I’m part of the clan — we lost that, and now we are having meat on a daily basis.

Liesl: How do you address this heavy meat-based diet with your community?
Alfred: You show them that this is how we lived traditionally, and this is how we changed. It’s better for us to go back to our roots and traditions. Also, looking at health aspects, now there is more diabetes, high blood pressure, and there’s cancer. These all increased with these changes in diets.

Liesl: What role do you think the church can play?
Alfred: The Church should understand that they have a role to play for the animals because they are God’s Creation. It’s not only about animals being there, but it’s also about animals being God’s Creation.

Amen. Gratitude to both Linda and Alfred for sharing their thoughts with me. Long may these two amazing people continue to be part of the global CreatureKind community.

^{1. The Open Wing Alliance is a global coalition working to end the use of battery cages in chicken farming https://openwingalliance.org/.↩}
^{2. When asked to explain the term “Pan Africanism” Alfred said: “Pan Africanism…aims to bring unity and the resurrection of lost traditions and cultures of people in Africa and of those of African descendency. Food is prepared, stored, and used in traditional ways. It specifically refers to the ways African cultures play an important role in molding and developing human animals towards plant-based diets that use traditional and locally available ingredients. When we talk about Pan Africanism we talk about animal welfare in Africa being championed by people in Africa, with food culture and traditions playing important roles in nurturing compassion.”
↩}
^{3. A kraal is an enclosure for cattle and other domestic animals in southern Africa. (Collins dictionary online: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/kraal.)↩}
^{4. Linda Ncube’s blog: Growing Up at an Adventist Table (November 10, 2021) offers additional important thoughts about this. ↩}
^{5. With the word “diet,” Alfred is referring to the totality of a person’s and/or culture’s eating practice, which differs from the Western “diet culture” that is rooted in restricting certain foods to attain body shape and appearance ideals. CreatureKind supports and encourages dietary practices that are holistic, meaningful, and informed by values like cultural, ecological, and creaturely wellbeing. Alfred’s and Linda’s stories attest to these important distinctions.↩}

Sacred Compost: Reclaiming the Muck

March 3, 2023 Guest User

By: Brooklynn Reardon

Have you ever smelled a new compost pile that has been cooking in the sun? If you have, you will know that all the leftover food scraps like moldy bread, leftover spaghetti sauce, and rotted veggies mixed together makes for one…interesting…smell. The best compost has the perfect mixture of worms, leftover food, dirt, and something green, like leaves. If you take too much time to think about compost, your spine might start to shiver—all the tiny bugs and living bacteria just festering in the hot sun. Every day the ingredients get mushier and start to look less like old food, and more like muck. Compost piles are not the most appetizing or appealing hang-out spots—they’re smelly, gross, dirty, and grimy. They’re unclean.

Most aspects of sustainable farming are quite gross. If the soil is healthy, tons of worms and creepy crawling bugs are present, helping the soil breathe and the plants receive nutrients. To make that soil healthy, it’s likely the farmer added some manure and a lot of mucky compost. Sometimes plants get sick, or an invasive bug takes bites out of the fruit, especially on farms that do not use harsh chemicals to ward off bugs or diseases. Sometimes critters come running through the fields for a taste of the growing bell peppers. Sometimes the dirt gets stuck under your nails from pulling weeds. If the farm has animals like goats or chickens, sometimes the goats drop pellets by your feet, and sometimes the chickens leave droppings on their eggs. Sometimes the pigs like to roll around in the mud, and sometimes they roll around in their smelly food. Yes, sustainable farming can be entirely unclean. It’s smelly. Grimy. It’s dirty.

Throughout scripture, the biblical authors write countless stories about the God who meets creation in filthy situations. For instance, a “manger” is a bin used to feed barn animals—Jesus himself was born in an animal trough. In Mark 7, Jesus restores a man’s eyesight with his own spit. Just before his death, in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read about Jesus’s sweat trickling out of his body like blood. Whether through locusts flooding the streets of Egypt or a hemorrhaging woman reaching for the fringe of Jesus’s clothes, we worship a God who meets us in spaces many of us typically think are unclean.

In our work with CreatureKind, the other fellows and I have embarked on a journey to better understand what it means to care for non-human neighbors, especially farmed animals, as God’s beloved creation. Personally, I have found that caring for creation begins with how humans understand/see ourselves in relation to the world around us—what Norman Wirzba calls our theoria.¹ For example, if Western societies see the earth as a “natural resource,” it is only reasonable that our actions would be to treat the land as nothing more than something to be used for human gain.² To think of a chicken solely as a means of profit leads to overcrowding factories and genetically modifying chickens to produce the most amount of money. Said differently, how humans treat the world will always correspond to their preceding understanding of it. As such, I am convinced we must change both the way we understand the world and who we are in relation to it—especially those of us who live according to a Western framework.

As Christians, God is constantly calling us to reimagine and recenter our understanding of the world and ourselves through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The work of caring for the earth and farmed animals begins with reimagining the world, not as a natural resource or a means of profit, but as God’s beloved creation. Imagine how differently a chicken might be treated if its identity were no longer rooted in profit but in the Creator. How much more would we value healthy soil if we believed God was at work in the dirt?

Perhaps it is hard to imagine a God who works through things often thought of as unclean. Here, I’m talking specifically about the dirty reality that is creaturely life—not necessarily that which is broken or oppressive, but more so what is earthly, which has, in many cases, become disordered and warped by sin (such as industrial agriculture or colonialism), but is not sinful in and of itself. Quite the contrary, in Genesis, God proclaims that all creaturely life is good (Genesis 1:31). So why is finding creaturely commonality so challenging?

Personally, I believe it is difficult for many Christians to see ourselves as truly a part of creation. Indeed, a desire to disassociate from “gross” things is entirely reasonable.

Throughout the history of the Western church, biblical scholars and preachers have emphasized that God made humans “in God’s image.” As a result, I believe those of us in the West have latched on to this notion because it makes us feel like we are more god-like than creation-like. Even now, when we think of “nature,” we think of a world that is entirely separate from human society—a place we must escape to for a weekend—but not neighborhoods we actually live in. We have forgotten that we are ultimately creatures—earthlings. What if more of us began to see ourselves as a part of the muck?

The reality is, our lives as humans are entirely intertwined and dependent on the earth and the meshwork reality scripture calls creation because we, too, are creatures. And as creatures, our lives, our bodies, and our hearts can be pretty grimy, dirty, and gross, too. Like Jesus, humanity sweats, bleeds, spits, and eats dirt. With every breath we take, gulp we drink, and bite we swallow, we should be reminded that we are a part of the filthy reality that is earth.

Fortunately for us, a Christian reimagining of the world and ourselves is made feasible by a God who is already at work in the dirt. As scripture continuously proclaims, sometimes what is holy, sacred, restored, and resurrected is also dirty, grimy, and entirely unclean. Accordingly, I believe there is something sacred about the messiness of compost.

Compost is made up of old food and biodegradable products that would typically be thrown in the trash. Compost is sort of like the farmer’s waste bin. Except in this dirty trash can, God meets us in the muck. After a few months, or maybe a year, the pile of hot moldy food becomes healthy soil. What was once trash meant to be disposed of becomes a source of new life. With the composted soil, the farmer mixes in dirt and fills up her beds as she readies for a new season of crops. The compost makes the next harvest possible. While the process might be entirely “gross,” compost takes something dead and brings about new life. The story of compost is similar to our own: it is one of resurrection. Indeed, God is often at work in filthy situations.

^{1. Wirzba, Norman. “Christian Theoria Physike: On Learning to See Creation.” Modern Theology 32(2). (April, 2016).↩}
^{2. Here I am speaking specifically from a Western context, more specifically in the United States, but also all those who operate and live according to the neoliberal hegemonic consciousness.↩}

How Corporations Determine the Food We Eat

January 26, 2023 Guest User

Written by: Liesl Stewart

In 2015, the governments of the USA and South Africa fought about chickens–chicken meat, to be precise. The US congress had given South Africa special trading status to export goods to the US without import taxes, amounting to many jobs for South Africans. But, under the Obama administration, the US government threatened to withdraw this favorable trading position when South Africa began putting high taxes on imports of US chicken “waste meat” (for example, the leftover cuts from the white meat portions that US and European consumers prefer).¹ This meant less money for US chicken farming corporations. South African chicken farming businesses wanted these taxes because, without them, the US chicken would be cheaper to buy in South African supermarkets than the locally-farmed chicken meat. The South African government finally gave in, allowing for 65,000 tons of US chicken imports into the country annually.²These were high economic stakes for both US and South African farms, and millions of farmed chickens, plus the livelihoods of working people, were caught in the crossfire.

The globalizing, corporate food systems are driven by money and power, not by health and nutrition, nor by creaturekindness. The colonization of foods and diets has been multilayered over the past centuries, and colonization continues in the ways that corporations dominate food systems. These systems are colonial and racist to their core, and they wield violence against peoples, animals, and the earth.³ Governments posture and flex their muscles as they collude with powerful food corporations that lobby for more power over economically vulnerable countries. More and more, these corporations determine not only what we eat but who eats and who doesn’t, who eats too much, who eats well, how much nutrition they get, and whether or not it’s enough to fill people’s stomachs. The escalating globalization of food systems affects whole culinary cultures, as well as individual households’ diets throughout the world.

South Africa, where I’m based, is a good example of this. In a recent blog, I shared parts of an interview I did with the Reverend Tsakani Sibanda, a Church of the Nazarene pastor in Khayelitsha, one of the largest townships in Cape Town. I asked Rev. Sibanda about how she sees global food systems impacting her parishioners’ diets in their underserved community, where there are financial and geographical limitations to accessing healthy, nutritious food. Below, I have described parts of our conversation, which I’ve interspersed with direct quotes from her.

Rev. Sibanda: “When we’re saying we want to address the food systems, for me … that’s the wrong place to start, because this is not about food, it’s about money. It’s about the economic system. It’s about greed. It’s about understanding what drives this thing. Is it people-driven? No. It’s money-driven … [Because the system is money-driven] we can exploit all of God’s Creation… we can have such huge food waste, and have people starving … So, we know this is not about food, right? There’s plenty of food. This is about money.

What happened with the trade agreement with Obama? … They Insisted we have to take the chicken from America or else we lose the whole trade deal! … That was forced on us because this is not about the food; this is about money; this is about power.”

When I asked Rev. Sibanda about the lack of affordable healthy food in Khayelitsha, she offered important insights about the abusive, predatory nature of food corporations and their aggressive marketing. She likens the situation to an abuse survivor who has been groomed by the perpetrator.

Rev. Sibanda: “I was talking recently about how much research goes into food, to play with it in the lab, and play with our palates, so our palates have been trained to eat, our eyes have been trained to see things in a different way, and think, “Oh this is so appealing!” So we constantly feel like we made a choice, we constantly feel like this is what we wanted. We’ve been made to eat the foods that we eat. We’ve been exploited here for the benefit of the corporates, for the benefit of whoever is making the most out of this.

We are groomed psychologically to think this is the food we want …You feel like it’s your decision, that as a victim you agreed to this. We’ve been trained, we’ve been mentored, we’ve been groomed into liking those things that are not good for us. When talking about access [of nutritious food] … if you made those foods available here, who would eat them? Yes, it’s about access but it’s also that we’ve been trained. The system has been manipulated so that we do not have food access [to healthy food].”

Indeed, these foods are advertised to the public with massive corporate budgets, shaping access and creating markets for their products. Sophisticated advertising works to spin a web of promise – promise that consumers will be living the “good life” by consuming certain products. Whether looking at a box of breakfast cereal in Mexico, a can of Coke in Korea, or a pack of chicken drumsticks in South Africa (with happy, free-roaming chickens on their labels), consumers are asked to believe in the story that’s being sold with the product. And big money has been poured into research and marketing to make people want to buy those branded products that have traveled across continents. Aggressive and targeted food marketing hammers away at us almost unnoticed, shaping our tastes and diets.⁴

Food is money, and this reality has huge health implications. Health experts widely agree that many countries are in a “nutrition transition.”⁵ Food corporations continue the legacy of colonizing food systems, while driving more and more people away from their traditional foods. For the Global South, this often means adopting a Westernized diet of foods that are high in salt, refined sugars, refined grains, and animal fats. These foods aren’t nutritious enough to sustain good health for the long term and can lead to chronic health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, which are already among the top causes of death for US citizens.

Ironically, because of this colonization and aggressive marketing, the Westernized diet has been pushed as aspirational, suggesting proximity to wealth and whiteness. It is falsely promoted as the healthier choice, while local, traditional diets are being rejected because they are negatively associated with primitivity, Blackness, and bad health. One tragedy of this is that the Westernized diet ends up replacing local, traditional diets, which are healthier and often more plant-based. In the last few centuries, missionaries, governments, and colonial business powers saw that local, traditional crops were replaced with foreign cereals and other mono-crops. Rev. Sibanda spoke about the loss of traditional foods that people knew how to grow and prepare, and that were healthier to eat.

Rev. Sibanda: “We were told that using natural herbs was demonic … So then we had the psychology that what was good for us, and what we lived on [traditionally] was deemed to not be good, until it was repackaged differently and now it’s ‘good’ for us. We couldn’t eat this, because … we had been made to believe it was ‘poor people’s’ food. And now all these foods can be resold to us [as healthier].”

Indeed, often South Africans are averse to eating foods they associate with times of poverty and historical hardship. Mpho Tshukudu and Anna Trapido, authors of the book Eat Ting, explain that many traditional South African foods “bear witness to the culinary creativity of a community under stress.” In this case, they’re referring to the oppressive Apartheid years. As a result, “Many of us have a love-hate relationship with so called ‘poverty foods.’ In the rush to shed the indignity of apartheid and poverty, we have abandoned many of the nutritious tastes of those times in favour of foreign junk food. Very few people have attempted to reintroduce pre-colonial, pre-apartheid dietary diversity into their daily lives.”⁶

Rev. Sibanda: “My mom used to grow sorghum. We grew up on that. Then we understood it to be ‘poor people’s’ food [and we didn’t want it].”

The most recent Barefoot Guide publication⁷, which focuses on traditional foods in the different countries of the African continent, explains: “The beauty of traditional dishes and diets is that they treat food as food where we care about how it is grown as well as its social, psychological and cultural role in contributing to our quality of life in body, mind, soul and community.”⁸ Some of the traditional greens and grains are now being reclaimed more widely, but often businesses are also repackaging them as super-foods with higher price tags, making them less affordable.

This isn’t unique to South Africa or other southern African countries (like CreatureKind Fellow Linda Ncube’s country of Zimbabwe, which she wrote about in a CreatureKind blog). Many peoples and communities globally have similar stories to tell. It’s also interesting to note that many traditional diets have a bigger focus on plant-based foods than the Westernized diet that’s constantly pedaled by corporations. There is much to learn from people who know about growing, processing, and preparing local, regionally-adapted, indigenous foods.

You might be thinking: This is all quite interesting, but what on earth does this have to do with farmed animals? CreatureKind is focused on the liberation of farmed animals, after all!

Farmed animals are caught up in the destructive ways of our corporate, globalizing food systems. Take the millions of chickens caught in the middle of the trade negotiations mentioned above: neither government was concerned with the welfare of the millions of chicken creatures. Store-bought chicken meat in both countries almost always comes from factory-farmed chickens.

Whether we’re looking at a pack of chicken meat in a South African or US supermarket (or elsewhere), big money has usually been poured into marketing that chicken to make us think it was raised roaming free on a lovely small family farm instead of living and dying in misery in a factory farming system. Meat labels are loaded with deceptive, often unregulated terms like free-range, humanely raised, natural, or cage-free, which are attempts by the meat companies to make us think the meat came from animals who lived and died on high welfare farms (known as humane washing).

We are sold outright lies about the treatment of farmed animals. We are lied to every day by food corporations who aren’t concerned with our health and nutrition, who aren’t concerned about the working conditions of farming and slaughterhouse employees, who aren’t concerned about destruction to local and shared environments, and who aren’t concerned with the welfare of the farmed animals. For them, this is about big profits.

Now is the time to pay attention to what is happening and to be aware of how marketing shapes our palates and our food choices. We shouldn’t underestimate how much we’ve been influenced by the relentless messaging of advertising, which doesn’t tell the truth about what we’re eating.

To end, I express my gratitude to Rev. Sibanda for sharing her thoughts so that we might all better understand what’s at stake in determining what we eat.

^{1. https://providencemag.com/2015/12/the-south-african-american-chicken-war/
↩}
^{2. https://agoa.info/news/article/5715-south-african-poultry-shares-fall-on-us-chicken-deal.html↩}
^{3. Christopher Carter, on the Board of CreatureKind, explains this in great detail in his book The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 2021).↩}
^{4. Raj Patel offers helpful information on the relationship between food advertising and health impacts in Chapter 9: “Chosen by Bunnies” of his book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System (Harper Perennial, Toronto, 2007). ↩}
^{5. Barry M. Popkin, Linda S. Adair, and Shu Wen Ng, “The Global Nutrition Transition: The Pandemic of Obesity in Developing Countries,” Nutrition Review 70, Issue 1 (2012): 3-21, https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/70/1/3/1829225?login=false
↩}
^{6. Mpho Tshukudu & Anna Trapido, Eat Ting: Lose Weight, Gain Health, Find Yourself, 2016 Quivertree Publications, Rondebosch, South Africa, 12. While ending fat shaming is an important conversation gaining traction globally, this book has merit for a specific sociocultural context in South Africa.
↩}
^{7. The Barefood Guide publications are free offerings of “Creative ideas, stories, practices and resources of social change leaders and practitioners from around the world.” https://www.barefootguide.org/.
↩}
^{8. Barefoot Guide Agroecology Series: My Food is Africa: Healthy soil, safe foods and diverse diets, (2022), 3. https://www.barefootguide.org/barefoot-guide-10---my-food-is-african.html. ↩}

Cows are People, Too

January 20, 2023 Guest User

Written by: Rev. Matthew Webber

I looked across the pastures on a frosty morning, just on the outskirts of town, and watched the steam rising off of the cattle as they grazed in an attempt to keep warm. I had no claim to these creatures as they were someone else’s herd, but they were familiar to me, having driven past them every day. Just minutes prior, I had kissed my dog on the head, telling him “Goodbye,” for the morning as I headed off to the church where I pastored and would go about my Monday tasks, preparing for the upcoming Sunday’s sermon. It would turn out, however, that the particularly chilly drive into the office that day would alter my entire outlook on life, as well as my vocational trajectory. 

For several weeks, while sitting at my desk, I pondered the juxtaposition of my beloved Golden Retriever and the cattle I drove by every morning. Always wrestling with theological and ethical theories and how best to put them into practice, I struggled to find a means by which I could justify my behavior as a believer, as an espoused animal lover, and (at the time) a meat eater. Moreover, I was left asking myself, “What does it mean for me, as a part of the Church-at-large, to be in ministry centering the welfare of animals farmed for food?” Before long, I found myself back in graduate school, having stepped away from active pastoral ministry in the local church, in the hope of answering this question. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lesson that impacted me greatly came from Bernard Rollin who was a champion for the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals for most of his life. As a professor, Rollin worked extensively with ranchers worldwide and would repeatedly claim that he never taught the ranchers anything. Instead, he would ask the ranchers questions about nonhuman animals and their proper treatment, which allowed the ranchers to say what they knew. For many, this exercise helped overcome any cognitive dissonance that arose over time. The lesson for me was that individuals don’t need to be taught how to treat nonhuman animals; they simply need to remember something they have long since forgotten. 

Suddenly, I was whisked back in my memory to the time on my grandpa’s farm when I was helping paint the barn. I say, “helping,” but surely the fact that I could only reach a few feet above the ground and that more paint ended up on me than on the barn conveys a very liberal sense of the term. Still, what I remember most is that I was terrified of these massive creatures who were curious about people near their barn. My grandfather told me that the cattle were more afraid of me than I was of them—although, I’m not sure that was actually true given my size compared to theirs. I kept an eye on them, and they kept a keen eye focused on me. 

I, of course, survived the ordeal. And while this was not my first face-to-face encounter with cattle, it was the first time without a fence or something between us. It made me think, though, what it meant for these creatures to be more afraid of me than I was of them. What had I done to them to make them so fearful? As an adult, recalling this farmyard chore, the memory elicited thoughts of what it means to be fearful and the similarities between human and nonhuman emotions. These thoughts, combined with the memories of cattle on a cold Colorado morning, raised the question of why we might see cattle differently than we see a beloved dog. Is it due to species differences? Is it due to society? Perhaps it is due to proximity? Seeing the cattle through the windshield of my pickup was different from seeing the dog with whom I shared a home. Moreover, I came to understand that I still bear a responsibility for those around me, no matter who they are and regardless of their species.

I was introduced to Emanuel Levinas, a Jewish philosopher born in Lithuania, via a footnote in an article about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and ethics. With my interest piqued, I sought to wrap my mind around the concept of “the other” and what is humanity’s responsibility for or toward the “other” in one’s midst.¹ Levinas’s use of the term “other” is not meant in a derogatory way, but rather designates any and every person who is not oneself. Thus, the “other” is every person who is “other than oneself.” Emphasizing the “other” rather than oneself is a stark contrast to the idea that we each have an “individual right” to be treated a certain way, saying instead that we each have a responsibility to the “other” in the world. And while there is some discussion about whether or not Levinas intended for his ethical theories to be applied to humans alone, the theory can teach us—or perhaps even remind us—that the “others” in our world do include nonhuman animals as well as our fellow humans. It may even be said that when individuals are responsible for and to those who are “other than” themselves, such behavior inevitably includes both human and nonhuman elements.

Briefly, and by no means exhaustively, the one who is “other than” me is not lesser than me, nor do I have any power to control or force my will on anyone. What I am called to witness is that, by simply existing, the “other” calls me to recognize the life that is within them and, as such, obey the commandment to preserve that individual’s life—i.e., “do not kill.” Rather than merely refrain from killing, though, I am called to ensure that this individual can live out their life, which means I am responsible for ensuring that the lives of “others” around me—which is everyone and anyone who is not me—continue being lived. Thus, I am responsible for ensuring the “other” does not starve, freeze, or be killed by anyone else, nor should they be exploited, abused, or oppressed.

Where Levinas says “other,” we can substitute the word “neighbor,” and consider the answers offered in the Gospels to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”² Jesus—who was apt to remind individuals what they already knew about how to treat one another (Matthew 22:36-40; Mark 12:28-34; and Luke 10:25-28)—used the example of someone considered “other” in his example of how to act appropriately toward one’s “neighbor.” The term “neighbor” need not impose limits by connoting a sense of proximity. Included in the answer are some who remain unseen or marginalized by many in the world today. Hidden away behind giant walls or within hospital rooms while the world outside continues to unfold day after day. Who is the unseen in our world? Perhaps included in the unseen are workers who are integral in the continued lives of countless millions, yet they are seldom acknowledged by those who depend on the unseen “other.” Take, for instance, those who work on the floors of abattoirs. Are not these individuals our neighbors for whom we are called to care and ensure they can live healthy lives?

One of the most striking aspects of Levinas’s ethic of the “other” is that we are not only responsible for those in close proximity to ourselves but also to and for those we never encountered in person or even in thought. Despite referring to “the face” of the “other,” Levinas’s ethic describes one’s obligation to every “other” in the world, no matter who or where they might be. Moreover, it is the “other” who, regardless of who or where they might be, plays a significant role in defining the individual. In other words, the “others” in our world, whether seen or unseen, make me who I am. These “others” instruct me, without ever saying a word, by their very existence. What do they instruct me to do? They instruct me to ensure that they live and continue to live their lives. This claim is important, but I would also add that we must ensure that the “others” continue to live their lives humanely and without oppression. This is our obligation to the seen and unseen “other.” This is our responsibility to and for the seen and unseen neighbor. 

Within this responsibility for the seen and unseen “other,” one can extend the call to ensure humane lives continue for the unseen nonhuman animals with whom we share the world. Surely these are unseen neighbors, whether they are unseen because humans turn away from the oppressive confines of industrial agriculture or because the closest many come to nonhuman animals is in the supermarket where labels add to the distance via the absent referent of calling porcine bodies “pork” or “bacon.” Reading Levinas next to the Gospels (Matthew 5:44; Mark 12:31-33; and Luke 10:27-29), I see much room for continued discussion of how we are to treat those in our midst but also those far away or hidden away, regardless of species. 

This is a long answer to my question regarding ministry and farmed animals. My memories of cattle, as well as the fact that they feel fear and have eyes that convey much to even the smallest and most paint-covered observer, serve to remind me further that these “others” in bovine bodies call out to me, asking me to ensure their lives continue and may bear fruit. Rooted in the Gospels and with a little help from Levinas, I hope to further develop and extend this ethical responsibility for the “other” to include all of Creation. 

In closing, I am grateful for the insights offered by Levinas. His was a voice I had not heard before 2019. Additionally, through CreatureKind, I am discovering new epistemologies and sources to better understand what it means to care for and take responsibility for one’s “neighbor” who is “other” than oneself. While I am still in the very early stages of discovery, wise minds have pointed me to the teachings of Indigenous peoples in the US North American context, who, rather than holding a view that people are entitled to certain aspects of life, we are instead called to be responsible for and to the others and for the world we share.

^{1. For further reading on Emmanuel Levinas and his ethical theory, see his works Emanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being: An Essay on Exteriority, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press). ↩}
^{2. Michael Fagenblat, Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism, (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pg. 2.↩}

We Have to Talk About This

November 8, 2022 becreaturekind

By: Nathan Brasfield

Because of the severe ecological harm it inflicts through the abuse and exploitation of non-human animals and humans alike, industrialized animal agriculture—which fills grocery stores and restaurants with meat, dairy, and eggs—is among the most significant moral blind spots of contemporary society.¹ And it is not well-known that one change many people can make in their daily lives that would help restore health to the air, soil, and water is to eat fewer animal products from industrial animal agriculture.

I was not informed about such harm or possible solutions by my church, the government, or even an environmental organization. I discovered it by reading the works of authors like Lisa Kimmerer, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Matthew C. Halteman. Ever since, I have watched as the issue has remained steadily unacknowledged in discussions and various resources about the ecological crisis.

This is an alarming problem, but it is a tremendous opportunity for the Church to fulfill our purpose. We are called to seek justice and peace together and to have sacred conversations. Ever since its inception, the Church has been a community shaped and identified by food traditions that promote justice, peace, and wholeness and that show gratitude for the gifts of God.²

How we eat, then, expresses our faith. This is not only apparent theologically, but it is also demonstrably biblical. Jewish and Christian scriptures hand down a rich variety of narratives, instructions, and poetry that reveal the significance of just eating. The scriptures attest to the importance of conveying gratitude, bringing justice, and restoring and sustaining peace on God's earth.

The same scriptural narratives have been crucial in developing my understanding of humanity’s vocation and identity as caretakers of the earth. And they explicitly pronounce our particularly human responsibility to care for non-human animals in ways that may surprise those of us who have been conditioned to believe that God and humanity share an exclusive relationship.³

Despite this contradiction, Christians in the U.S. consume an excessive amount of the flesh, milk, or eggs of farmed animals, which includes cattle, chickens, goats, sheep, swine, and turkeys. The amount consumed is more than the earth can sustain, and it is more than what would allow humans to treat fellow creatures with the care and respect owed to them.

About a decade ago I began to wake up to this reality. Before then, my consumption of animals was entirely unexamined, just as my plastic waste and greenhouse gas contributions went unchecked. But then, I began my seminary master’s degree and was invited to dinner by some new school friends. During our conversation over dinner, they would become the first Christians I ever knew who were mindful of how their food choices affected the earth, and they suggested I watch a certain documentary to learn more about where our food comes from.

My first ecological awakening, then, upon viewing this documentary was to the moral atrocities committed against the animals living in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), as well as the lives of people directly involved in the system (CAFO operators, slaughterhouse workers, neighbors of these facilities, etc.), most of whom are BIPOC, in poverty, and/or undocumented and face considerable food insecurity. I had grown up deer hunting and was taught by my father to say a prayer of gratitude for the animals we harvested. I don’t know why I had never considered it before, but I realized that this attitude was totally at odds with the one I had toward the animals from grocery stores and restaurants and the systems that produced them. The first change I made in my life, as a result, was to not buy meat at the grocery store, and then I gradually ate less meat when dining out.

Years later, I read a book that summarized the depth and breadth of the ecological harm caused by an unnecessary and wasteful industrialized animal production system. I was shocked to learn that in addition to the cruelty inflicted upon humans and non-human animals, the food system is a major driver of water, air, and soil pollution and degradation, it is one of the leading contributors to the human-caused climate crisis (approximately 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, not just agricultural emissions), and it is among the most inefficient methods of producing food while so many do not have enough to eat (approximately 10% of earth’s population).⁴

At this point, when I felt like I truly understood for the first time the scale of the damage being done by industrialized animal agriculture, I committed to buying as little of these products as possible and eating more plants instead. I also reoriented my life plans so that they would include bringing attention to and taking action on this issue in the Church and society to the best of my ability.

These plans began to fall into place in truly amazing ways a few years later when I began the Doctor of Ministry in Land, Food, and Faith Formation at Memphis Theological Seminary, where I was already on staff and where I currently co-chair the Green Team committee. On this committee, I am working to develop guidelines and recommendations for meals on campus that would allow us to be more ecologically responsible and mindful of the welfare of farmed animals. I will also be completing my doctoral project this year. My work will be supported by the CreatureKind Fellowship Program as I help educate and resource church members on this issue in the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, where I am also on the Creation Care steering committee.

As I center the welfare of animals farmed for food in my ministry, I realize that I face a challenging obstacle. Many people have become accustomed to making decisions about what to eat based purely on individual preference. But when food choices have such enormous ramifications for how we relate to God’s world, those of us who can choose differently should not continue to make decisions about what to eat based purely on preference alone. Such decisions prove to be starkly indicative of how we have been shaped more by a capitalistic economy and naive individualism than by theology and the scriptures.

Much like “being green” and becoming more ecologically conscious in general, eating fewer animals and animal products, like milk and eggs, has been allowed to remain niche, as if it is merely an option for those of us who just so happen to have a special concern about these things. This cannot be, as Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter, United Methodist pastor and professor of religious studies, has argued in his book, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice.¹ Forgoing participation in industrialized animal agriculture has to do with justice, even social justice. The reasons to make different food choices, therefore, have to do with everyone. It is certainly a personal decision to decide what to eat, but it is one of many decisions that we make every day that connect us all, for good or for ill. The Church has a tremendous opportunity here to eat in loving, sacrificial ways that bring justice and healing.

In consideration of the social and ecological importance of eating fewer animal products, Carter critiques popular notions of “veganism” by offering a different understanding of it from a Black perspective. This perspective helps frame the repercussions of individual and communal food choices that don’t take racial justice into account: “To be sure, veganism is often associated with white people who have too much disposable income and only care about animal suffering. This type of noncritical veganism does exist. However, black veganism as I define it is to eat in a way that decenters whiteness, challenges capitalism and colonialism, and reclaims the Black culinary and ecological heritage.”¹ Whether one decides to become strictly vegan or not, Black culinary and ecological heritage help show how decisions about food have not to do merely with individual preference but with all people being accountable—in daily life—to secure life and liberty on behalf of all of the creatures for whom it is our responsibility to care, including each other.

The problems of industrialized animal agriculture and humanity’s complicity in its cruelty have for too long been ignored in the Church. My decision to center food choices accordingly in my work is just that—a decision not to allow food choices to remain on the fringes nor relegated to individual preference. In light of the magnitude of the current ecological and social crises that are resulting from unjust food systems (such as the deaths and displacement seen from the recent floods in Pakistan), it is absolutely critical that we as the Church talk about the ways that food choices are often a substantial part of the problem. And it is our biblical and theological imperative as the Church to spur further conversation, even in the public sphere, as we play a collective part in giving rise to a good and just food system.

^{1. Nicholas Kristof, “The Mistakes That Will Haunt Our Legacy,” New York Times, July 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/opinion/sunday/animal-rights-cruelty.html. ↩}
^{2. As in Acts 2:44-47; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34↩}
^{3. Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-20; 7-9; Exodus 23:10-12; Leviticus 17:1-4; Acts 15:19-20↩}
^{4. P.J. Gerber, H. Steinfeld, B. Henderson, A. Mottet, C. Opio, J. Dijkman, A. Falucci, and G. Tempio, Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock -- A Global Assessment of Emissions and Mitigation Opportunities (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2013), 15; Francis Vergunst and Julian Savulescu, “Five Ways the Meat on Your Plate is Killing the Planet,” The Conversation, April 26, 2017, https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128.↩}
^{5. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2021).↩}
^{6. Carter, Spirit of Soul Food, 19.↩}

Eating at the Service of Life

August 15, 2022 Guest User

By: Liesl Stewart

In my previous blog post, I used a conversation I overheard about the high cost of pot roast to write about the corporatization of our food systems–and specifically animal agriculture–in the US and the world. As corporations use industrial production methods to farm animals, Creation pays heavy costs. The earth, the environment and climate, plants, and animals (human and nonhuman) all suffer in the name of profit. I will talk more about these costs, but let me first talk about seeds and life.

According to the Gospels, Jesus sometimes told parables about seeds to explain the ways of his governance. I’m a gardener, so I do love these seed parables. For a few years now I’ve chewed over one particular parable in Mark’s Gospel:

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” (4:26-28 NRSV)

I find grace in this parable. The seed sprouts and grows, even when the farmer isn’t attentive to it. Yes, they scattered the seed, maybe even poured water over them; but the farmer couldn’t make the seeds themselves grow. The farmer’s work is to serve the life within the seeds, to help with the external factors that make the seeds flourish–watering, pruning, mulching, and feeding. The farmer even gets to rest from their work as part of the growing cycle.

The grace for me is the expansiveness of life formed within each tiny seed. A blueprint for growth is embedded in the seed’s matter, and a mysterious life force creates new, differentiated cells as if out of nothing. The seed grows to become the glorious plant it was created to be. Life pulses forth with vibrant color and splendor in God’s created order, and it is our humble, but sacred, work as human animals to serve this life.

But we know the parabolic farmer could have gone to the fields and uprooted the seedlings. They had the power to bring death to those plants. And if we extrapolate this parable to the present era, human animals collectively have the power to affect weather patterns that bring death to the plants.

Today, our dominant global food systems don’t serve life. In his excellent book, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith & Food Justice, Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics Christopher Carter delineates the ways the US and global food systems are built on the ideologies and business models of coloniality and white supremacy, which bring death to Creation.¹ To serve corporate greed, human and nonhuman animals are treated as “less than.” This food system is rooted in the beliefs that some people are worth less than others, and that, as people, nonhuman animals and the earth are ours to exploit.

In his book, Carter makes a clear call to reject this corporatized system and unhitch ourselves from food institutions dealing death to Creation, and instead to “create ‘food institutions’ that are at the service of life.”²

At the service of life.

I find this phrase so helpful when I think about the kinds of food institutions I want to support. I’ve been learning about food systems, and I believe it’s clear the prevailing corporatized food system doesn’t serve life.

Let’s look at the costs of corporatized farming, costs that don’t serve life:

The corporatization of a country’s farming comes at a terrible cost to the people working in food production systems. It isn’t a coincidence that, in the U.S., meat corporations recruit our society’s most vulnerable people as employees. The system relies on the exploitation of people—disproportionately BIPOC and immigrants—who are desperate for any income, and therefore are willing to work for low wages under harsh and dangerous working conditions, without job security.
The corporatization of a country’s farming comes at a terrible cost to the animals that are farmed. Every nonhuman animal that is farmed is a sentient being able to suffer. When animals are valued only as units of profit, the standards for kind or even acceptable treatment drop lower than the poop-covered cement floors they spend their days on. For their whole miserable lives—from inception to slaughter—these animals are owned by corporations, and their quality of life counts for nothing against their potential to bring profit.
The corporatization of a country’s farming comes at a terrible cost to our climate. We are facing catastrophic climate change if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reduced. Animal agriculture accounts for 14.5%-18% of human-caused emissions. To meet increasing demands for meat, forests are being cleared to grow feed crops, causing stored carbon to be released into the atmosphere. There are differing opinions about whether meat can ever be produced sustainably (or with the welfare of animals farmed for food in mind) for the global population; but it’s certain that if we are going to avoid catastrophic climate change, we need to substantially reduce our consumption of animal-based foods produced in industrialized farming systems.
The corporatization of a country’s farming comes at a terrible cost to public health and the environment. It’s impossible to have thousands of animals living and dying in confined spaces without harmful consequences for public health (antibiotic resistance, the spread of zoonotic diseases and pathogens, etc.) and the environment (pollution, contaminants, and chronic illness). In addition, it costs ordinary people a lot of money to address the harm caused by these corporations. These externalized costs never show up in the companies’ accounting books; they are paid for by the public—either directly or through taxes.

Back to that conversation about the high cost of pot roast. The cost of the meat produced in industrialized farming systems is far bigger than the prices we pay at the cash register. These terrible costs don’t serve life.

Many of us want to rethink the foods we eat and the sources of our food, which could lead to a repositioning in response. We can start by paying attention to where we source our food. There are many localized food networks offering good alternatives to the corporate food system.

If we eat animal-based foods, we can choose to eat much less, and commit to sourcing from small farms that are known to farm at the service of life. (They need our support!) For those who wish to reduce consumption of animal products, CreatureKind offers guidance with DefaultVeg, a program that helps reframe what constitutes a good meal.¹ Or one could consider eating a wholly plant-based diet. There have always been indigenous people eating plant-based diets who are guiding the way for others. Now, many people who have been raised within corporatized food systems are breaking away and choosing plant-based diets.

Changing eating and food shopping habits can feel overwhelming, but good, lasting changes don’t have to be dramatic or abrupt. I can speak from my own experience: over the past sixteen years, my family has been on a food journey that has transformed the way we eat. It has been a gracious journey of many small changes made over time. Through participation in a food buying collective, we thoughtfully and intentionally changed the foods we buy, from whom we buy, and our purchasing rhythms.

The grace has also been that we haven’t journeyed alone. There’s still much to learn, and we have been strengthened by joining our efforts with other people seeking to eat in the service of life.

^{1. This book is well worth reading to understand our food system’s historical and current contexts. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 2021).
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^{2. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 2021), Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2, Rakuten Kobo.↩}
^{3. Around the world more people are eating more meat each year, and that increase is mostly produced through industrialized systems. In 2018 the average person in the USA ate a record 220 pounds of meat. (Eleanor Cummins, “America’s obsession with meat, explained. Here’s the beef,” Popular Science, Oct 28, 2019, https://www.popsci.com/why-americans-eat-so-much-meat/)↩}
^{4. Advocates for regenerative farming methods argue that when farmed animals are allowed to graze and forage naturally on managed pastures, water, carbon and nutrients are sequestered in the soil. They argue that in this way regenerative systems improve ecosystem resilience and mitigate climate change.
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^{5. What is DefaultVeg? DefaultVeg is simple. By making plant-based food the default, we make the choice at every meal to help animals, the environment, and other people (including farm and meatpacking plant workers all over the world). At church or other group events, we give people the choice to opt in for meals with animal products if necessary, instead of having to opt out of them. A DefaultVeg approach is simple, inclusive, and cost-effective.↩}

The Cost of Pot Roast

August 1, 2022 Guest User

By: Liesl Stewart

Recently, while cooling off in a pool in Arizona (USA), I overheard a conversation. As they bobbed on foam noodles, a group was bemoaning the high cost of pot roast. “Have you seen the prices?!” Heads shook in knowing commiseration, for meat prices had indeed increased noticeably. The conversation rolled along covering in great detail exactly where pot roast could be bought for the cheapest prices.

I was interested in this conversation because I knew food prices were climbing, and people generally were concerned about food inflation. In February this year, global food prices reached the highest level ever. They had increased by 24.1% in the last year. ¹

And the cost of that pot roast? While food prices were climbing, Tyson Foods,² the U.S.’s largest meat corporation by sales,³ posted a $1 billion profit the first quarter of 2022–up 48% from that same quarter the year before.⁴ This seemed confusing to me because, in the same period, meat prices in the U.S. increased by an average of 13.1%.⁵

How could this be? How could Tyson Foods and other meat corporations report spectacular profits when consumers were feeling a tighter pinch to their wallets every time they bought meat? When Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King celebrated these company earnings, he said, “The company worked closely with customers to pass along that inflation through price increases.”⁶

There we go. That’s how this can be. The company–read this with giant air quotes–“worked closely with consumers.” How did they do this? By setting much higher prices for meat, and letting consumers pay for those increases. 13.1% increases, to be exact. Their profiteering has, in fact, increased inflation.⁷ It's hard not to feel incredulous anger toward this industry and the corporate systems that enable their activities!

However, as expensive as it is now, I’ve learned that the true cost of pot roast isn’t simply the money paid at the cash register. There are costs that are hard to see behind the price tags, and these costs have everything to do with corporations gaining dominance in the business of animal farming. To talk about both the overt and hidden costs of meat in the U.S., it’s important to identify the source of the problem: the corporatization of the nation’s–and world’s–food systems.

I grew up hearing the narrative that the U.S. is a patchwork of small family farms–from the “amber waves of grain” to the “fruited plain”. I believed that each of these family farms is a healthy ecosystem of crop varieties and different farmed animal species feeding the country in the most wholesome ways. This was once true but not anymore. This image is so strong, however, I didn’t realize how much the country’s land and foodscapes have changed in just my lifetime of fifty-some years.

A 2008 report produced by the Pew Commission found that over the past seventy years industrialized production has replaced the traditional, decentralized family farm system as the dominant reality of animal farming in the U.S. today.⁸ In this concentrated system, there are far fewer farm operations, and each is enormous in scale, holding large numbers of animals of the same species in enclosed, crowded conditions that restrict the movement of the animals. In addition, this model of industrial farm animal production employs far fewer workers than the decentralized system.

Animal production on this scale is driven by corporations. If a person eats meat, eggs, or dairy products in the U.S. without deliberately sourcing from the small farms that are the exceptions, the animals have been factory-farmed and processed by a handful of corporations that are politically powerful. Their dollars speak loudly in state legislatures and in the lobbying halls of Washington D.C. They dominate U.S. animal agriculture, such that many small family farms have gone out of business.⁹ Sadly, many countries around the world have also adopted this corporate production model.

How did I not know this? Because the world is urbanizing and, like many people, I’ve only lived in cities. I don’t often see what’s happening in rural areas where food is produced. I don’t see the enclosed concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and industrial facilities that don’t look at all like the picturesque family farms I thought dotted the countryside. I don’t see the trucks carting live, frightened animals from the CAFOs to be killed at meat processing plants. And, I don’t see the poorly paid CAFO and slaughterhouse workers living in rural poverty because they aren’t my close geographical neighbors. As Christopher Carter writes in his important book The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice, “To be fair, this is how industrial food systems are designed to operate: we consumers are not supposed to think about where our food comes from.”¹⁰

I began writing this blog as we finished celebrating the Easter season. As I followed the lectionary readings, the words of Jesus jumped out at me: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15) We don’t simply proclaim with words. Our discipleship is expressed in full-bodied, everyday living, and the good news is for all that Creation encompasses–not only for human animals, as I believed for so many years. The way we live and eat should proclaim good news to all of Creation.

I now believe that corporate agribusinesses exploit Creation. Decisions about the welfare of people, animals, the earth, and the environment as impacted by industrial farming are made in boardrooms, not in day-to-day embodied interactions with the people and animals living, working, and dying within farming systems. CEOs are answerable to their shareholders, who are primarily interested in short-term profits–not in providing good working conditions for employees or the kind treatment of animals within their care. When governmental oversight and regulatory bodies aren’t powerful enough–which they definitely aren’t in the U.S., nor in most countries–corporations can exploit Creation in the name of profit.

This industrialized mode of meat production has terrible costs for Creation, costs that are much greater than the price tag on a pack of pot roast. I’m going to look at these costs–the true costs of industrially farmed pot roast–in a follow-up to this blog, for it’s important to know what those costs are. Thankfully, we can learn new ways to support food systems that proclaim good news to all Creation, so I’ll also write about some of those.

This discussion will continue in my next blog…

^{1. Food Price Index hit record high in February, UN agency reports, UN News, March 2022 [Online resource] retrieved from https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113332#:~:text=The%20Food%20Price%20Index%2C%20which,per%20cent%20up%20from%20January.&text=This%20is%20also%2024.1%20per,higher%20than%20in%20February%20201↩}
^{2. Though they're well-known for chicken, Tyson produces significant amounts of beef and pork with brands like Steak-EZE®, Original Philly™, Hillshire Farm®, Star Ranch Angus®, and more.↩}
^{3. Michael Hirtzer, Tyson Soars as Rising Meat Prices Boost Profit, Sales View (Bloomberg.com, 7 February 2022), retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/tyson-foods-tops-earnings-estimates-with-meat-prices-rising↩}
^{4. Sarah Ovaska quoting Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary, “Grocery Store Prices Are Up, But So Are Corporate Profits” (Cardinal & Pine online, 14 April 2022), retrieved from https://cardinalpine.com/story/grocery-store-prices-are-up-but-so-are-corporate-profits/#:~:text=Tyson's%20CEO%20says%20they're,This%20is%20about%20corporate%20greed.↩}
^{5. https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/supply-chain/news/22172152/usda-predicts-food-price-hikes↩}
^{6. Elizabeth Crawford ‘Tyson: In this dynamic environment, we will be aggressive in monitoring inflation and driving price recovery activities' [Tyson Foods is celebrating a better-than-expected fourth quarter thanks in part to “aggressive” pricing actions that buoyed sales and offset inflation, and a “bold” new productivity plan that seeks to bring the company’s operating income margin up to at least the 5-7% range on a run rate basis by mid-fiscal 2022.] (Food Navigator, 16-Nov-2021) Retrieved from HTTPS://WWW.FOODNAVIGATOR-USA.COM/ARTICLE/2021/11/16/TYSON-BENEFITS-FROM-AGGRESSIVE-PRICING-TO-OFFSET-INFLATION-LAYS-OUT-BOLD-PRODUCTIVITY-PLAN ↩}
^{7. Michael Hirtzer, Tyson Soars as Rising Meat Prices Boost Profit, Sales View (Bloomberg.com, 7 February 2022), retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/tyson-foods-tops-earnings-estimates-with-meat-prices-rising↩}
^{8. Pew Commission Report: “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” [Executive Summary] (A Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2008), 1.↩}
^{9. I liberally used the wording directly from the source: The Pew Commission Report: “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” (A Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2008), 49.↩}
^{10. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2021), 43.↩}

Can I Care about Animals Farmed for Food?

July 19, 2022 Guest User

by: Liesl Stewart

“When you’re wanting to free animals, you have to free people. Because we are all interdependent. We want animals to live a free life, but we’re all chained to the system.“

Reverend Tsakani Sibanda shared these words when I recently interviewed her. Rev. Sibanda is a Church of the Nazarene ordained minister from the Limpopo province in South Africa. For the past few years, she has pastored a church in Khayelitsha, one of Cape Town’s largest township communities.¹ Her theology is forged daily in faithful service to her parishioners, some of whom are all too familiar with hunger and the health effects of malnutrition.

I went to her with questions about how to hold the care for farm animals together with care for human welfare, given that many of our neighbors live daily with the brutalities of poverty. I have often witnessed righteous anger from Black South Africans who experience white people as showing more care for the wellbeing of nonhuman animals than for their Black human neighbors. South African poet Phelelani Makhanya alluded to this sentiment in an open letter that he wrote in response to recent local and global racial violence:

Dear white people, We are not even begging for the flake of love and empathy you give to cats and dogs and rhinos and parrots. We are not even begging for the crumb of care you give to rose bushes and lawn.

A recent World Bank report rated South Africa the most unequal country in the world. South Africa is rich in minerals and precious metals, but only 10% of the country enjoys 80% of the country’s wealth. After centuries of violent colonization by European nations, the Apartheid government continued to oppress Black, Indigenous and other people of color for five decades by stripping away their rights and not treating them as fully human. The entrenchment of generational poverty and trauma has kept many people locked into cycles of poverty that seem ready to repeat for generations to come. According to the World Bank report, “The legacy of colonialism and apartheid, rooted in racial and spatial segregation, continues to reinforce inequality.”³
In this current wealth disparity, many people are food insecure. While a small portion of people wine and dine with carefree ease⁴, more than half of this country’s residents don’t have the household income to buy enough nutritious food to sustain good health.
South Africa is extreme, but there are deepening inequalities in many countries, with poverty often tied to ethnicity and race.⁵ I believe this conversation is relevant for many countries of the Global South and North.

For my own social location in South Africa, I am a middle-aged white woman who carries both US and South African passports. I live within the country’s top 10% stratum of wealth. My interest and work focus is to create more sustainable food systems that are rooted in kindness and care for Creation. Therefore, it’s my joy to write for CreatureKind. My values align with the organization’s mission to seek better lives for nonhuman animals that are farmed for food. I respect their intersectional theological message proclaiming good news for all of creation–the earth, ecosystems and ecologies, human and nonhuman animals, plantlife, buglife, and all those strange in-between forms of life we learn about on nature shows.

But, I live with a tension when I work to better the lives of farm animals who suffer within industrial farming systems. Given how much privilege and wealth lies with white people in this country and world, how can I focus on the welfare of farm animals when too many people live with the daily trauma of hunger? Who can have the capacity to care about farm animals when many people are facing immense material needs? Can we care about our human neighbors living with hunger, and also care about farm animals?

I took these questions to Rev. Sibanda who is one of the best theologians I know. Below, I have described parts of our conversation, which I’ve interspersed with direct quotes. As a white person, I need to listen to her words non-defensively and change my behavior as needed. I invite every white person reading this to join me.

According to Rev. Sibanda, people have created a hierarchy rooted in white supremacy, in which some humans are treated as less than human.

Rev. Sibanda: “That means you’re equating them to animals. We’ve seen that played out from slavery, from colonization, from Apartheid.”

In the biblical Creation story, written in Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.” A common Christian way to understand Genesis 1:26 is that to be human is to be formed in the image of the Creator. This understanding means that truth isn’t qualified by degree, nor by the distinction of race, culture, nationality, or geography. Rather, humanity is defined by God and not by any human powers or institutions.

Because many of us don’t fully understand the liberating truth that all human beings are created equally as image-bearers, some people are still treated, according to Rev. Sibanda, as “more equal than others,” and others are “dehumanized.”

Rev. Sibanda: “The anger that you will see in South Africa is because [Black] humans are still being treated as less than. They’re not [treated as] human yet.” This leads them to believe that for white people, “Animals are more human than human beings are. That’s where the problem is, where the pushback is for Black people.”
Rev. Sibanda: “The question that a lot of [Black] people have in anger is the question of how do we justify [people] wanting to care for animals but not wanting to care for human beings?”

Many people can’t see the intersectionality of these issues because, not only in South Africa but also globally, it’s easier to try to care for the earth and animals rather than care for other human beings.

Rev. Sibanda: “That’s harder work for us to do. When white colleagues [in the church] talk about justice, none of them want to sit and talk about the racism that’s right here right now. It’s harder to say, ‘Let’s really work on this white supremacist system,’ because actually dealing with it would mean a whole lot more losing of privilege, and that’s very hard for people to do.”

She believes the global food systems aren’t designed to appreciate and celebrate human life and capability.

Rev. Sibanda: “They are designed to feed the greed of individuals and countries that deem themselves as more powerful within the hierarchy. This is not about food anymore, this is about money. The exploitation that we have for the animals that we eat for food, for me it’s not that different from the exploitation that workers and laborers go through. So we’re exploiting all of Creation. We cannot seek the liberation of one without the other. When you’re wanting to free animals, you have to free people. Because we are all interdependent. We want animals to live a free life, but we’re all chained to the system.“

(I express my deep gratitude to Rev. Sibanda for this conversation!)

Christopher Carter, professor of Christian theology and ethics, unpacks the interdependence that Rev. Sibanda speaks of in great detail in his excellent book The Spirit of Soul Food: Race Faith, and Food Justice. “Anti-Black racism and the human/animal tension are inextricably linked.”⁶ He explains, “Nonhuman nature—particularly the nonhuman animals within it—is entangled within the same oppressive logic that continues to justify racism, violence, and the marginalization of Black and other people of color.”⁷

It’s the logic of white supremacy that pushes us to choose between caring for people or caring for animals, according to the values assigned. Wherever our geography or social location, it is ours to work for the liberation of all Creation, because we’re all interdependent and deeply loved by God.

As a white person, I commit myself to joining the work of dismantling the white supremacist system, including the ways I’ve personally participated and benefited. I commit myself to the work of identifying and renouncing my own theological opinions that are rooted in the false understanding that some people aren't fully made in the image of God. I can only work to liberate farmed animals from miserable lives and deaths if I’m simultaneously working for the liberation of all people.

^{1. The part of a town or city in South Africa where black people had to live because of Apartheid. (McMillan Dictionary)
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^{2. Phelelani Makhanya, “Dear white people, we are going through a lot... can you please give us a break?” Independent Online, May 17, 2022, https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/opinion/dear-white-people-we-are- going-through-a-lot-can-you-please-give-us-a-break-862b0974-6604-4002-8c58-1b62625fdb3d. ↩}
^{3. South Africa most unequal country in the world: Report”, Aljazeera, March 10, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/10/south-africa-most-unequal-country-in-the-world-report#:~:text=South%20Africa%20is%20the%20most,World%20Bank%20report%20has%20said.↩}
^{4. Ezekiel 16:49, (NASB”). This is one passage where God directly addresses the cause of Sodom’s demise, and links it directly with what is translated as pursuing lives of careless ease on the doorstep of poverty. ↩}
^{5. “The challenge of inequality in a rapidly changing world,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN.org, last accessed June 27, 2022. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/ world-social-report/2020-2.html#:~:text=The%20challenge%20of%20inequality%20in,change%2C%20urbanization%20and%20international%20migration.↩}
^{6. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2021), 13. In fact, Rev. Dr. Carter goes into great detail about various thoughts shared by Rev. Sibanda here in this blog. His book is well worth a careful reading!↩}
^{7. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2021), 23. ↩}

Jesus comia peixes? Nós deveríamos comer peixes?

July 12, 2022 Guest User

By Bianca Rati

Texto :
Bem-aventurados os que têm fome e sede de justiça, pois serão satisfeitos. - Mt 5:6

Introdução

A bíblia é um livro cheio de mistérios. Alguns destes mistérios são somente espirituais, outros são históricos e talvez todos sejam uma mistura dos dois. Historicamente, os eventos bíblicos ocorreram há muito tempo, em locais e culturas muito diferentes das nossas e é por isso que precisamos ter cuidado ao fazer afirmações sobre a bíblia porque corremos um grave risco de dizer coisas com base neste texto sagrado que não são necessariamente verdades e mandamentos ou que podem ser aplicados desta forma.

Apesar deste cuidado, é possível utilizar as histórias bíblicas e seus ensinamentos como pontos de partida para refletirmos sobre a nossa realidade atual. E é por isso que, apesar de difícil, essas duas perguntas não são irrelevantes, pelo contrário, elas podem nos levar a refletir princípios éticos e cristãos sobre alimentação e em relação aos animais. Sendo assim, podemos criar o hábito de olhar para a bíblia menos como um manual de regras e mais como um livro de princípios pelos quais interpretamos a vida.

1. Jesus comia peixes?

Então, vamos a primeira pergunta: Jesus comia peixes? O primeiro texto que vem à mente para falarmos disso é Lucas 24:41-43 onde Jesus come um peixe assado ofertado pelos seus discípulos. Logo, a partir deste texto, podemos afirmar que Jesus comia peixe. Mas acho que é importante contextualizar esse trecho entendendo como era a alimentação típica da época e região onde Cristo viveu.

Podemos nos lembrar das diversas interações que Jesus teve com os peixes: alguns de seus discípulos eram pescadores e Ele navegou em seus barcos ajudando em pescas, descansando, pregando, ou acalmando tempestades. Jesus também multiplicou pães e peixes para multidões em pelo menos duas ocasiões e encontrou uma moeda dentro da boca de um peixe.

Considerando a geografia das regiões que Jesus habitou (mapa ao lado), podemos perceber a proximidade e o fácil acesso ao mar. Os peixes eram parte comum da alimentação de muitas pessoas do período, como judeus e romanos e eram pescados no mar da Galiléia, Mediterrâneo e no próprio Rio Jordão. O que sabemos é que a maioria da população não tinha acesso fácil à carne de outros animais, especialmente pelo seu alto preço, portanto os peixes acabavam sendo importantes na dieta local.

Além dos peixes, outros alimentos eram importantes na dieta das pessoas do tempo de Jesus: castanhas, frutas como figos, tâmaras e romãs, azeitonas, mel, verduras, trigo, centeio, cevada, mostarda, hortelã entre tantos outros alimentos que estavam presentes na vegetação local e que eram fáceis de cultivar naquele terreno. Diante disto, podemos concluir que Jesus, enquanto homem judeu e pobre, consumia peixes, assim como provavelmente todas as outras pessoas do seu tempo.

2. Devemos comer peixes?

Dito isso, se Jesus comia peixes, é correto que nós façamos o mesmo? Devemos também comer peixes? Assim como a pergunta anterior precisava de um contexto bíblico maior para ser compreendida, para responder essa pergunta precisamos então analisar o nosso contexto atual, especialmente porque ele é tão diferente daquele de Cristo.

Segundo dados da FAO em 2018, 179 milhões de toneladas de vidas marinhas foram retiradas do mar produzindo um valor estimado em US $401 bilhões e aproximadamente 87% da produção foi destinada ao consumo humano. O consumo per capita de pescado pela população mundial aumentou e apresenta elevada importância na alimentação de muitas populações. Estima-se que seu consumo representa 17% da ingestão de proteína animal pela população mundial. Em países como Bangladesh, Camboja, Gana, Indonésia, Serra Leoa, Sri Lanka e pequenos países insulares, os peixes representam até 50% da proteína animal consumida.

A aquicultura, que é como se chama a pesca em cativeiro, geralmente envolve peixes de água doce. A produção via aquicultura foi de 54,4 milhões de toneladas de peixes (47 milhões espécies de água doce e 7,3 milhões espécies marinhas); 17,7 milhões são moluscos e 9,4 milhões crustáceos em 2018 no mundo todo.

Apesar de nossa enorme costa litorânea e das aproximadamente 800 mil pessoas que trabalham e sobrevivem da pesca no Brasil, não temos dados concretos sobre a pesca marítima desde 2011. Já sobre a pesca em água doce, não existem dados produzidos pelos governos desde 2014. Somos o 13o país quanto a produção de peixes em cativeiro, e o 8o na produção de peixes de água doce.

Há uma estimativa, longe de precisa, que anualmente são retirados do mar brasileiro 500 mil toneladas de peixes. Segundo um relatório de 2014 do Ministério do Meio Ambiente a lista de espécies do interesse pesqueiro em ameaça de extinção aumentou de 17 espécies em 2004 para 64 em 2014¹. No nordeste do país, aqueles que praticam a pesca artesanal estão mais suscetíveis a insegurança alimentar forte e que as mulheres são ainda mais afetadas e têm propensão maior de adquirirem doenças derivadas de movimentos repetitivos²³. Apesar do Ministério da Pesca e Aquicultura ter prometido em 2020 que fariam esforços para coletar dados com transparência e auditáveis, e que levariam ao Congresso a proposta para atualizar a Lei da Pesca (que é de 2009), não encontrei notícias recentes sobre essas propostas.

No Brasil e no mundo, a indústria da pesca também é uma grande poluidora do mar. Os equipamentos de pesca geralmente são de plástico e aproximadamente 640 mil toneladas são despejadas nos oceanos todos os anos. Esse lixo plástico causa diversos problemas ambientais e mata muitos animais que se engasgam ou se enroscam nesses dejetos, a cada ano são mortos pelo menos 100 mil. Já a técnica chamada pesca de arrasto, que consiste em enormes redes que são puxadas arrastando o fundo dos oceanos e que tem pouquíssima fiscalização no Brasil, reduz as populações de peixes e de toda a fauna marítima. Altera dramaticamente o solo oceânico e mata grande número de corais, esponjas, etc. Esse tipo de técnica também captura milhares de animais não intencionalmente e que acabam morrendo. Esse dano colateral é chamado de bycatch.

Em 2017 o percentual de ambientes aquáticos de pesca classificados como “biologicamente sustentáveis” caiu para 65,8% (eram 90% em 1974). Boa parte está no limite máximo de captura, ou seja, podem entrar em sobrepesca a qualquer momento.

Por fim, precisamos falar sobre os peixes em si. Mais de 360 espécies de peixes são pescados no mundo. De forma geral, os estudos sobre peixes ainda são recentes. Isso também pode demonstrar um certo desinteresse ou distância dos humanos quanto a vida aquática.Temos muitas crenças sobre peixes, que eles têm a memória quase inexistente, que não sentem dor, que não tem nenhum tipo de inteligência. Hoje estudos já demonstraram que os peixes são sencientes, ou seja, tem habilidade de sentir dor por exemplo e têm preferências por certos ambientes em detrimento de outros. Além disso, eles têm memória, inclusive de anos, e utilizam dela para se localizarem, defenderem de perigos e se alimentarem.

Conclusão

Diante disso, devemos comer peixes? A verdade é que essa é uma resposta mais complexa que sim ou não. Porque dizer um simples sim ou não é apagar as nuances. Muitos de nós olharemos estes dados e teremos condições de fazer a escolha individual de não apoiar mais financeiramente esta indústria, escolhendo parar de comer peixes. Outros de nós não terão este mesmo privilégio, seja por falta de acesso a uma diversidade alimentar, seja por questões financeiras, seja por questões de saúde.

Sim, Jesus comia peixes. Mas não podemos comparar a pesca nos tempos de Cristo com a indústria pesqueira, nem em escala (ou seja, a quantidade de vidas que tira das águas), nem na forma que realiza essa atividade. Além disso, hoje nós sabemos e conhecemos muito mais sobre os peixes do que nos tempos de Jesus. Naquela época é provável que as pessoas nem considerassem os peixes como animais, pelo menos não da forma que enxergavam porcos, pássaros, cavalos, etc. É interessante perceber como até os dias atuais costumamos colocar os peixes (e a vida aquática de forma geral) como uma categoria de animais de menor valor. Muitas pessoas, quando param de comer animais, são questionadas: “mas peixe você come né? Nem um peixinho?”. Isso é porque até conseguimos compreender ter empatia pelas vacas, porcos e galinhas, mas pelos peixes não.

E diante de tantas diferenças com a realidade material da vida de Cristo, talvez seja mais produtivo nós olharmos não somente para as Suas ações individuais mas para os princípios que promoveu. Cristo pregou sobre a vida e vida em abundância, se associou com as pessoas pobres, doentes e marginalizadas e sobre justiça. Pensando em todas essas questões que vimos, talvez essa ampla relação de Cristo com pescadores e o fato de se alimentar de peixes tenha muito mais a ver com as mesas onde Ele escolhia participar do que com a sua “dieta” preferida. Ele participava das mesas marginalizadas, das mesas de comunhão, das mesas do perdão e da justiça.

É muito comum vermos pessoas cristãs usando um peixinho na traseira dos seus carros como símbolo de fé e identidade. Esse símbolo, chamado de Ichtus, surge com a perseguição dos primeiros cristãos e era usado como código de identificação de espaços cristãos secretos. Eram duas letras que, quando usadas juntas, formavam essa imagem de peixe. Mas o Ichtus não é somente um símbolo de identificação cristã, ele também é um símbolo de resistência a um império que massacrava vidas animais humanas e não-humanas. Sendo assim, acredito que não cabe a mim dizer se cristãos devem ou não comer peixes, mas posso dizer com segurança que como cristãos devemos refletir sobre nossas práticas, hábitos e posicionamentos diante de indústrias imperialistas e opressoras.

Referências

Coleman, William L. Manual dos Tempos e Costumes Bíblicos. Venda Nova: Editora Betânia, 1991.

Brasil não produz dados sobre pesca marítima
O protagonismo do Brasil na produção de pescado
Vídeo: Catholic Concern for Animals in conversation with Prof. David Clough on fish welfare Sobre a memória dos peixes
Checagem dos dados apresentados no documentário Seaspiracy
Sobre a pesca de arrasto

^{1. ((o))eco. “Pesca No Escuro: Brasil Não Sabe a Situação de 94% Dos Peixes Que Explora - ((O))Eco,” December 13, 2020. https://oeco.org.br/reportagens/pesca-no-escuro-brasil-nao-sabe-a-situacao-de-94-dos-peixes-que-ex plora/.↩}
^{2. Patrízia Abdallah, and Vivian Queiroz. “Trabalhadores Da Pesca Em Condição de Insegurança Alimentar Na Região Nordeste.” Accessed April 11, 2022. https://editora.pucrs.br/edipucrs/acessolivre/anais/encontro-de-economia-gaucha/assets/edicoes/201 8/arquivos/40.pdf.↩}
^{3. Rêgo, Rita Franco, Juliana dos Santos Müller, Ila Rocha Falcão, and Paulo Gilvane Lopes Pena. “Vigilância Em Saúde Do Trabalhador Da Pesca Artesanal Na Baía de Todos Os Santos: Da Invisibilidade à Proposição de Políticas Públicas Para O Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS).” Revista Brasileira de Saúde Ocupacional 43, no. suppl 1 (December 3, 2018). https://doi.org/10.1590/2317-6369000003618.↩}