news and notes, Oct. 28 '08

be a part of ...

- Tomorrow, Wednesday the 29th, a student-based Christian creation care group called Renewal is calling for a day of prayer "for the renewal of God's creation" (Facebook invitation).  They are extending the invitation for groups to gather on campuses, churches and in homes, but also for individuals to take a few moments out of their day to pray.  While Renewal is an environmentally-focused group, I think this is an excellent opportunity for those of us who have a special heart for animal welfare issues to pray as well, even more so with some crucial ballot measures coming up for a vote next week (read on ...).

- Speaking of ballot measures, I'll be blogging more this week about Proposition 2: The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act which is coming up for a vote next Tuesday, November 4th, in California.  Here is a brief (2 min.) preview in the meantime ...

Also coming up for a vote next Tuesday is Question 3: The Greyhound Protection Act in Massachusetts, which I posted on a few days ago.  And if you live in Oklahoma or Arizona, please don't miss this information from the Humane Society on voting against two very crucial and unwarranted ballot measures seeking to prevent citizen-based intiatives to protect wildlife in Oklahoma (State Question 742), and to "take away the rights of Arizona voters to protect animals through the ballot initiative process" (Prop 105).

passage ...

Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!  Should not shepherds take care of the flock?  You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.  You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured.  You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost.  You have ruled them harshly and brutally.  So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. (Ezekiel 34:1-6, NIV)

otherwise quotable ...

The following is one of the most powerful and damning descriptions of factory farming I've read, from Matthew Scully (author of the excellent book Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy) on his visit to a North Carolina industrial pig farm.  The connection he draws to C.S. Lewis' commentary couldn't be more profound, and of great significance in helping us as Christians understand how God's call to stewardship has been grossly violated in this system:

The smallest scraps of human charity - a bit of maternal care, room to roam outdoors, straw to lie on-have long since been taken away as costly luxuries, and so the pigs know the feel only of concrete and metal.  They lie covered in their own urine and excrement, with broken legs from trying to escape or just to turn, covered with festering sores, tumors, ulcers, lesions, or what my guide shrugged off as the routine "pus pockets."

C.S. Lewis's description of animal pain - "begun by Satan's malice and perpetrated by man's desertion of his post" - has literal truth in our factory farms because they basically run themselves through the wonders of automation, with the owners off in spacious corporate offices reviewing their spreadsheets.

(Matthew Scully's description of a North Carolina industrial pig farm in "A Religious Case for Compassion for Animals", pg. 13)

photogenic ...

This heartwarming picture is of survivors of the 2008 Midwest floods taken in by Farm Sanctuary (copyright), which I'd also like to thank for their gracious permission to use other pictures throughout the site: