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Are We Addicted to the Suffering of Animals?
Animal Cruelty and the Catholic Moral Tradition
John Berkman
W — least ostensibly—to mindless animal cruelty.
Almost no one defended Michael Vick and his cohorts when they tortured
and killed dogs for their dog ghting ring. Imagine Michael Vick had been
selling a product—say dog-skin handbags from the “losing” dogs—that
nancially supported and enabled the continued torture of more dogs. We
would not only not buy these dog-skin handbags, we would boycott the
handbags and urge others not to buy them as well.
Michael Vick grew up in an American subculture where dog ghting
was socially acceptable. What was introduced to him at age seven as a
diversion and entertainment, became for him as an adult an addiction.
At twenty-one, as soon as he became wealthy, he set up his Bad Newz
Kennels near Surry, Virginia, and oversaw its operation for six years until
he was arrested. For his nancing and leadership in a particularly socially
unacceptable form of animal cruelty, Michael Vick went from the pinna-
cle of success—the highest paid football player in America at the time—to
bankruptcy and a twenty-three-month prison sentence. When Vick ar-
rived in prison, he still didn’t think he had done anything wrong. Only
while he was in prison did he come to see the cruelty of his dog ghting.
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
125
Since his release from prison, in talks to youth about his dog ghting,
Vick readily admits that he was addicted to it, saying that he spent more
time on his dog-ghting business than he did preparing to play football.
For Vick, it took many months in prison to see the wrongfulness of his
addiction to dog ghting.
Vick is by no means the only person who has failed to see his in-
volvement in animal cruelty and the wrongfulness of it. In fact, Vick’s Bad
Newz Kennels was simply a drop in the animal cruelty bucket compared
to that being perpetrated by his neighbor, Smitheld Foods. Joe Luter
III, CEO of Smitheld Foods from –, created the world’s larg-
est (and most notorious) factory farming system for pigs. Reading an
interview with Luter, you would not even know he is talking about live
animals, much less intelligent and feeling creatures, as he refers to them
only as “raw materials” for his business. Clearly, Luter does not think he
is doing anything wrong, much less engaging in boundless animal cruelty.
is essay argues that we are a lot more like Michael Vick and Joe
Luter than we care to imagine. No, we’re not highly paid football players
and we won’t go to jail or go bankrupt for our participation in animal cru-
elty. But like Michael Vick and Joe Luter, we participate in animal cruelty,
and we are similarly raised in a way that we do not see its wrongfulness.
How do we participate in animal cruelty? By spending billions of
dollars each year nancially supporting an incredibly common and per-
vasive form of animal cruelty: factory farming, which involves raising
pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and other animals in deplorable conditions.
And, like Michael Vick, we nancially support it in part because we have
an addiction. More specically, we are addicted to the taste of low-cost
industrial meat. As a result, we refuse to see our nancial support of large-
scale cruelty to animals.
And yet, in the last y years, factory farming has become the domi-
nant form of “raising” animals in America. If you buy chicken, pork, or
. Less than twenty miles from Surry is Smitheld, Virginia, birthplace and head-
quarters of Smitheld Foods. Founded in , Smitheld Foods was a small pig slaugh-
tering and packaging company for y years. However, in the s, Joseph Luter III
embarked on a plan to expand Smitheld Foods into the raising and intensive conning
of pigs. In doing so, Luter expanded and perfected factory farming with pigs, vaulting
his company into the largest producer of pig meat in the world in less than twenty years.
. See Miller, “Straight Talk from Smitheld’s Joe Luter.”
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A Faith Embracing All Creatures
eggs from your local grocery store, the animals that make up this food
have almost certainly been inicted with gross suering that in truth is
nothing other than institutionalized cruelty on a vast scale.
inking of Michael Vick and Joe Luter reminded me of how almost
thirty years ago, Bob Dylan sang the words, “Steal a little and they throw
you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king.” Dylan could equally have
said this about the factory farming industry. If you treat a few animals
callously, whether it is training your dog for ghting or torturing a few
cats, you can be cited for animal cruelty. However, if you cage millions
of animals in small spaces where they can hardly move; mutilate them
by cutting o their beaks, tails, and/or horns; brand them with hot irons;
castrate them; genetically engineer their bodies; and breed them with
techniques that result in a lifetime of severe pain, you are unlikely to ever
get penalized. In a cruel twist of fate, those at the forefront of these en-
terprises, like Joe Luter, are oen rewarded with signicant wealth and
inuence. Corporations that typically run factory farms have become
powerful enough to persuade many US state legislatures to explicitly ex-
clude all farm animals from any kind of animal cruelty legislation. Even
with government protection, factory farms typically operate under a cloak
of secrecy. ey are set up in remote places and surrounded with fences
and barbed wire so that no outsiders can see what goes on. Recently, in-
dustry supporters have also convinced US state legislatures to pass laws
against photographing or taking videos of the conditions in these places.
And you wonder why you don’t know where your meat comes from and
how it was produced?
In the face of these harrowing conditions and the industry’s attempts
to hide their vast animal cruelty, this essay contends that factory farming
is immoral. Furthermore, once we become aware of this wanton cruelty,
we must refuse to participate in it, in part, by choosing not to buy or eat
meat from factory-farmed animals. Factory-farmed meat is, if we are
honest, “cruelty meat,” and it behooves us to nd alternatives wherever
possible.
e rst half of the essay begins the argument by describing the his-
tory and character of factory farms in America, making it clear that ani-
mal cruelty is as necessary in North American factory farming as animal
. From “Sweetheart Like You” (Indels, ).
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
127
cruelty is necessary in dog ghting. In the second half of the essay, I will
develop the argument as to why all of us—especially Christians—ought
not to participate in this widespread and mindless cruelty to animals.
Turning to an argument that has historically been a part of Christian
social teaching, especially in the Catholic tradition, I will argue that sup-
porting factory farming by buying and/or consuming its products is a
form of what the Catholic moral tradition has called “cooperation with
wrongdoing,” which no morally serious person ought to do. Christians
have a particular obligation not to cooperate with the wrong of factory
farming, not only out of respect for God’s laws, but also because such par-
ticipation, once recognized and understood, corrodes their character and
undermines their ability to criticize or resist other kinds of evils. To be
clear, the point of this particular chapter is not to oppose meat-eating per
se. My objection here is not with the Inuit who eat seals as their primary
(or only) food source, nor with aboriginals who hunt and kill wild boars
for the same reason. Rather, my objection here is to wanton cruelty and
to Christian acceptance of, and collusion with, enterprises that engage in
that kind of action, whether the perpetrator is Michael Vick or Joe Luter.
What Is Factory Farming, and How Are Factory-Farmed Animals
Actually Treated?
So, what is factory farming? To answer this, we also need to ask two other
questions: How are factory-farmed animals actually treated, and when
did this system come about? In order to keep my argument narrow and
focused, I will discuss the factory farming of pigs only, since among the
various farm animals (a) they are the most consistently factory-farmed af-
ter poultry—more than percent of pigs in America alone are on factory
farms; (b) they are very harshly treated; and (c) they are the most social,
loyal, and intelligent (evidently more intelligent than dogs, for example)
of factory-farmed animals. As such, factory-farmed pigs arguably suer
the most from their harsh treatment, and along with poultry probably
receive the cruelest treatment.
A factory farm, also known as an Animal Feeding Operation (AFO),
a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), or an Industrial
Farm Animal Production (IFAP), is a highly intensied system for rais-
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A Faith Embracing All Creatures
ing animals for meat, dairy, or egg production. e basic philosophy is to
turn the farm into a mechanized system that needs as little labor and skill
as possible to produce the greatest quantity of meat for the lowest cost.
Typically, this means a large-scale economy: “Get big or get out” has been
the mantra of farming for decades. What is perhaps hard to believe and
thus important to note, is that in the logic of factory farms, the welfare
of animals receives no intrinsic consideration. e only reason to halt or
lessen cruel treatment of animals is if the degree of mistreatment leads
to an increase in cost of the end product. If the pigs are stued so close
together that some are regularly smothered, just toss the dead ones into
a dumpster. If disease breaks out, give them antibiotics to stave o the
illness until the upcoming slaughter. If a pregnant sow has a broken leg,
leave her in here pain until the piglets are born, then kill her because
mending her leg is not cost eective. Are the pigs so crowded, hungry, and
stressed that they start chewing on each other’s tails? Dock their tails and
grind down their teeth—without using anesthetics. Worried that a sow
might smother her piglets when she rolls over in her sleep because her
space is too small? Rather than give her more space, make her completely
immobile by putting her in a metal crate for months, perhaps even strap
her down to the oor; that way she cannot roll over at all. Although giving
more room to her and her piglets would reduce their suering, such a
move adds to costs and cuts into prots. Such is the inexorable logic of the
industrial production system when applied to intelligent mammals who
have emotions, habits, desires, and needs, and yet who are nevertheless
made to suer ad nauseum in this system.
e situation actually worsens when it comes to slaughtering fac-
tory-farmed pigs. Even though pigs can live from ten to eighteen years,
and do not reach maturity till they are three or four years old, most pigs
sent to slaughter are only six months old. ey are still piglets. But selec-
tive breeding and intensied feeding cause them to grow faster than their
bones naturally allow. is fast growth causes enormous stress on a pig’s
body. But waiting even three years is not economically desirable for large
corporations.
. “Docking” is clipping a pig’s tail to make it highly sensitive, because if a pig allows
its tail to be chewed, the pig is likely to get infected and sick and thus must be killed.
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
129
Although slaughterhouse conditions dier, we can get a clear picture
of the production line logic in which “economically required” modes of
transport to slaughter and “disassembly line” speeds lead inexorably to
massive cruelty. To transport them to the slaughterhouse, pigs are oen
beaten to force them into a severely overcrowded trailer. Some fall and
suocate when others are crammed in on top of them. Even though the
journey may be hundreds of miles, the pigs typically receive no food or
water. ese journeys oen have temperature extremes. In the summer,
since pigs cannot sweat, many die from heat exhaustion. In the winter,
many freeze to death, or more oen their bodies are frozen to parts of the
unheated trucks. One transporter notes that “in the wintertime there are
always hogs stuck to the sides and oors of the trucks. [Slaughterhouse
workers] go in there with wires or knives and just cut or pry the hogs
loose. e skin pulls right o. ese hogs were alive when we did this.”
According to a industry report, more than one million pigs die ev-
ery year in these transport trucks. Another industry report notes that
as many as percent of pigs arriving at US packing plants are “down-
ers,” which means that they are so ill or injured that they are unable to
stand and walk on their own. ese sick and injured pigs will be kicked
or struck with electric prods to get them to move, and if that fails, drivers
will grab their legs with winches to pull them, oen pulling their legs right
o in the process.
As awful as the transportation conditions may be, the pigs that die in
transport may be the fortunate ones. When they arrive at the slaughter-
house, the unloading is oen a witness to the sustained cruelty inherent in
these pigs’ short lives. Having been kept basically immobile for their en-
tire lives and fed a drug-riddled diet to make their bodies grow faster than
their bone structure can handle, their legs and respiratory systems are so
weak or deformed that in most cases they cannot walk very far. When
they come o the truck, they can see more open space in the herding pens
than they ever have. ose that can run for the rst time, mistaking the
slaughterhouse pen with freedom. But some collapse and cannot get up,
their bodies racked with weakness and pain. ey will be dragged.
. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, .
. Goihl, “Transport Losses of Market Hogs Studied.”
. Gonyou, “Stressful Handling of Pigs.”
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A Faith Embracing All Creatures
A typical slaughterhouse “disassembles” up to eleven hundred pigs
an hour. at’s a pig about every three seconds. e “required” speed of
the slaughterhouse means that if the initial attempt (or attempts) to kill the
pig (or stun it unconscious) fails, they won’t stop the “disassembly” line to
make sure the pig is dead before they start cutting it open, or before they
dip it into a tank of boiling water, which is intended to soen its skin and
remove its hair. For instance, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
documented fourteen humane slaughter violations at one slaughterhouse,
where the USDA inspectors found pigs who were “squealing aer being
stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times.” And as one slaughter-
house worker put it, “ere’s no way these animals can bleed out in the
few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding
tank, they’re still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time.”
While there may well be farming operations or slaughterhouses in
North America where these kinds of violations are rare, the cruel treat-
ment of animals described above is not unusual, extreme, or technically
criminal. Unlike dog ghting, where a relatively small number of people
at the margins of society become addicted to this perverse form of en-
tertainment, factory farming is not the result of a few nasty guys having
“fun.” Rather, it is mainstream corporate America employing torture and
cruelty as means of making money—lots and lots of money for those who
mastermind the factory slaughterhouses. For the unfortunate individu-
als—increasingly, new immigrants and migrant farmworkers—who have
to work on these “farms” and in these slaughterhouses for a paltry hourly
wage, it is cruelty as a means to an end. is is the business of torture.
When Did This System Come About?
Although crop farming was mechanized in the nineteenth century, indus-
trialized animal farming began with the large industrial slaughterhouses,
. US Congress, Congressional Record, V. , Pt. , May , to June , ,
.
. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, .
. In , his last year before retirement, Joe Luter made almost eleven million
dollars, with another nineteen million dollars in unexercised stock options. See Tietz,
“Boss Hog,” .
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
131
especially for pigs, in the early part of the twentieth century. According
to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production,
Henry Ford got his idea for assembling automobiles from watching how
industrialized slaughterhouses “disassembled” pigs. However, it was
only aer World War II—when people still remembered the dust bowl
and food shortages— that the push for a “green revolution” to feed a rising
population, a huge availability of inexpensive farmland, a strong futurist
mentality, and the desire to apply the factory model to the production of
all consumer goods gave rise to factory farming.
e rst serious analysis of this phenomenon was in the book
Animal Machines: e New Factory Farming Industry, by Ruth Harrison.
In the book, Harrison notes “a new type of farming, of production line
methods applied to the rearing of animals, of animals living out their lives
in darkness and immobility without the sight of the sun, of a generation
of men who see in the animal they rear only its conversion factor into
human food.” Harrison saw not only the fundamental transformation of
an “animal husbandry” model to a corporate factory model, she also saw
a rapid and fundamental change of culture. As she duly noted: “e fac-
tory farmer cannot rely, as did his forebears, on generations of experience
gained from the animals themselves and handed down from father to
son; he relies on a vast array of backroom boys with computing machines
working to discover the breeds, feeds and environment most suited to
convert food into esh at the greatest possible speed, and every batch of
animals reaching market is a sequel to another experiment.”
Although Harrison adeptly characterized the nature and logic of the
factory farm system, and although her work encouraged animal welfare
legislation in her home country of England, the animal welfare movement
historically got little traction in America; things would get much worse
in the thirty-ve years aer the publication of Harrison’s book. is has
changed slightly in the last decade; a few states have begun to ban gesta-
tion crates for pregnant pigs and battery cages for hens, but these victories
are small in the grand scheme.
. “Putting Meat on the Table,”
. Harrison, Animal Machines, .
. Ibid., .
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A Faith Embracing All Creatures
Why Is Factory Farming Wrong?
In the rst half of this essay, I sought to explain what factory farming
is, when it originated in America, and how it inicts wanton suering
on untold numbers of animals, a suering that is by no means necessary
for Americans to eat meat. Sadly, America’s history is sullied by man’s
seemingly boundless inhumanity to man, especially during the industrial
revolution: we think of the robber barons who exploited workers by pay-
ing them a pittance for working incredibly long hours in extraordinarily
dangerous conditions; we think of America’s sad legacy of child labor; we
think of the scourge of slavery. It is ironic that just as America entered a
period in which it ended the worst of these abuses of other human beings,
it established a new institution that began to exploit nonhuman animals
in ways and on a scale that no one could have imagined.
Turning to the Catholic moral tradition, there are a number of ways
in which one can criticize the practice of factory farming. In the last y
years the Catholic tradition has begun to develop the notion of “social
sin,” and factory farming ts this notion. However, since I wish to focus
not on the wrong done by those who engage in factory farming, but on the
wrongfulness of one’s buying and/or eating factory-farmed meat, dairy,
and eggs, I will draw on what the tradition calls cooperation with wrongdo-
ing. I will proceed by rst dening cooperation with wrongdoing and then
exploring cooperation with wrongdoing and animal cruelty.
What Is Cooperation with Wrongdoing?
e idea of cooperation with wrongdoing is simple enough when we
think about a variety of crimes. Procuring a gun for someone who plans
to commit a murder is a form of cooperation with wrongdoing; buying
stolen goods from someone or laundering stolen money are forms of
cooperation with wrongdoing, as is knowingly investing in companies
whose purpose is to engage in these kinds of activities. However, a simple
denition of cooperation with wrongdoing is when a person intentionally
or causally assists another person in unjust or wicked activities. A key
distinction in the Catholic tradition when speaking of cooperation with
wrongdoing is between formal and material cooperation. Formal coop-
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
133
eration is where one shares the object of the wrongdoer’s activity. is is
typically understood to be someone who advises or counsels the person
principally engaged in the wrongdoing, aids them by helping them escape
justice, and/or launders the proceeds of their criminality. So the person
who invests in a start-up company that will run a series of Internet scams
is formally cooperating in wrongdoing. So is the person who knowingly
“fences” stolen paintings or buys goods made by exploited child labor.
On the other hand, material cooperation is where a person clearly
has other intentions in their actions when they assist others in wrongdo-
ing. Examples of this include a pharmacist who dispenses medication that
someone else (unbeknownst to the pharmacist) uses to poison another
person, or a UPS delivery person who unwittingly delivers a package that
is booby-trapped to kill the recipient. While they causally assisted some-
one in wrongdoing, they typically did not intend to do so. In these cases
of material cooperation with wrongdoing, the actors are engaged in good
and legitimate activities, and the bad eects that ow from their activities
are clearly outside of their intentions. In more typical examples of mate-
rial cooperation, the cooperator is well aware of the way a wrongdoer can
or is using the cooperator’s otherwise good actions to facilitate wrongdo-
ing. In such cases, the person doing an otherwise good action may treat
the wrongdoer’s activities as an unwanted bad side eect. Moreover, in
addition to not intending the wrong action, if cooperation is to be consid-
ered material, we have to weigh the good against the potential bad. So a
delivery person might know that he or she could potentially and unknow-
ingly deliver a deadly package, despite all precautions, and still see that
the good of delivering mail in general outweighs the possible harms that
could be done.
Cooperation with Wrongdoing and Animal Cruelty
So now we come to the question of cooperating with cruelty toward
animals, whether it involves participating in dog ghting or in factory
farming.
Let us begin with those who set up and run a dog ghting opera-
tion. ese are people who provide the seed funding to begin the opera-
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A Faith Embracing All Creatures
tion; nd, buy, or steal the dogs, including dogs that are used as “bait”
in the training of the ghting dogs; train them to maim and kill other
dogs; and in various other ways mistreat them, for example, starve them
or socially isolate them to make them more vicious. ese people are all
engaged in a practice that our society has dened both socially and legally
as wrongdoing.
en there are those people who aid and abet the operation—by
bringing dog food, by selling the operators grandstand equipment and
seats, by running the food concessions at the dog ghts, by advertising
the ghts through word of mouth and other underground means, and so
on. Such people are likely to be formally cooperating with the operation,
though in some cases through lack of knowledge or understanding, or
even by duress, may be only materially cooperating with the dog ghts.
en there are those who attend the dog ghts. Presumably, attend-
ees purchase tickets and/or place bets with the “house.” us attendees
typically nancially support the operation. Even if they don’t have to pay
for a ticket or bet on the matches, they are there to witness this blood
sport.
Presumably, the audience sees nothing wrong with what they are
witnessing, or else many of them would not be there. However, that does
not justify their participation and support of it. While one could say that
the audience is only “taking in entertainment” or “attending a sporting
event,” those are simply not adequate descriptions of what is going on.
We cannot simply choose a morally neutral way of interpreting these ac-
tions, but have to take into consideration what is actually happening. e
description must match reality. And one of the morally signicant true
descriptions of what spectators at dog ghts are engaged in is morally and
nancially supporting the institutionalized practice of animal cruelty and
torture. is description is much more truthful than “they are just taking
in entertainment” because there are no credible mitigating or justifying
factors for their support of this blood sport. To say “we all need some
entertainment or relaxation,” or “this is a good opportunity to spend time
with my friends,” does not change the fact that attending these dog ghts
hardly makes sense unless one approves of them. e cruelty to these dogs
is not an incidental side eect to dog ghting. It is inherent to the sport of
dog ghting as it is practiced.
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
135
In short form, a similar argument applies to eating pig meat,
percent of which is produced by factory farms, a bureaucratic and insti-
tutionalized structure that, again, gives no signicance to the welfare or
well-being of the animals apart from what maximizes the corporation’s
prot. Assuming that this cruelty to the pigs is inherent to the production
of factory-farmed pig meat—what I have called cruelty meat—does pur-
chasing and eating pig esh fall under the category of formal cooperation
with wrongdoing?
For it to be material cooperation, the cruelty would have to be an
unfortunate side eect that was not essential to the production of the
meat as it is actually produced today in America. However, in North
American factory farming, cruelty is not a mere evil side eect or by-
product to some legitimate good of eating pig meat. e cruelty is as an
essential and necessary part of the logic of factory farming as is the cruelty
to dogs in contemporary dog ghting. For in factory farming, the welfare
of the animals is of no accord; it is entirely a matter of raising the animals
in a way that maximizes prots. Any care or consideration given to the
animals in the logic of factory farming is ordered to future maximization
of prot. A proper description of factory farming understands cruelty as
an essential element, and thus meat that one knows is from such a source
is improperly referred to merely as meat, but is properly and truthfully
described as cruelty meat.
us, if I were to eat North American factory-farmed bacon or ribs,
I would consent to the cruelty that is inherent in the production of that
bacon and ribs. It is analogous to buying stolen property. Even if I intend
only good and upright uses of a bicycle or a at-screen television, if I
know (or have very good reason to believe) it is stolen property, then I
am formally cooperating with wrongdoing. I consent or even contribute
to the wrong—both the wrong done to the victim of the the, and the
wrong of supporting and sustaining the thief in his business. So it is if I
eat factory-farmed bacon or ribs. I consent and perhaps contribute to the
wrong done to the victims of the cruelty, and I support and sustain the
wrong done by the factory farm industry. Hence I formally cooperate in
the cruelty to pigs when I buy and/or eat the bacon or ribs.
. Furthermore, for it to be acceptable material cooperation, the good of eating pig
meat would have to outweigh the cruelty that factory farming their bodies produces.
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A Faith Embracing All Creatures
is is especially true since there is no need to eat cruelty pig meat.
Millions of Americans don’t eat pigs. And if you can aord it and want
it, you can search for and pay the premium for pigs raised largely free of
the worst cruelty (although this pork is harder to nd). ere’s simply no
moral justication (or “duress” in the terminology of moral theology) for
continuing to buy and consume cruelty pig meat. Doing so is ignorance,
laziness, or gluttony, or perhaps all three.
Final Considerations
In this essay I have argued that wanton animal cruelty is an inherent el-
ement of modern American factory farming, and that if we wish to be
morally serious human beings, we should refuse to cooperate with this
hideous wrongdoing. Noncooperation requires that we refuse to buy or
eat cruelty meat. Within the limited argument I have made in this es-
say, that means not buying any kind of pig meat unless you have very
good reason to believe that that meat did not come from factory-farmed
animals. Similar arguments can be made regarding other factory-farmed
animals.
Factory farming is problematic for reasons beyond those upon which
I have focused in this essay. Factory farming contributes more to global
warming than all our motor vehicles combined. In a world with so much
starvation, the diversion of huge amounts of grain to factory-farmed ani-
mals is extremely wasteful. Eating hormone- and antibiotic-stued cows,
pigs, and chickens harms our endocrine systems and makes us far more
susceptible to drug-resistant “superbugs,” which kill more people than
we’d like to acknowledge. Our meat-heavy diets—diets made possible be-
cause of cheap industrial meat—are generally bad for our health. While all
signicant evils, they are not the point here.
Beyond that, there are also arguments one can make as to why one
might not want to eat pigs or other kinds of animals, whether factory
farmed or not. Some of these arguments—whether they be about the
health or ecological benets of not eating animals, or about the consid-
eration we should show to other animals as God’s creatures—are serious
and worthy of consideration. However, the moral argument against eat-
. I have argued elsewhere that we should consider vegetarianism based on
Berkman Are We Addicted to the Suering of Animals?
137
ing factory-farmed pigs seems overwhelmingly obvious. If one is not will-
ing to consider and act on that, then these other arguments would seem
to have little chance of a fair hearing, though the health argument, with its
appeal to blatant self-interest, is certainly successful at times.
Furthermore, Christians have a responsibility not to eat factory-
farmed animals because of the potential scandal. By “scandal,” the
Christian tradition means that when those of us who are exemplars for
other Christians—whether as parents, teachers, priests, ministers, or
lay leaders—do things that we know are wrong, we may lead others to
think that such wrongs are actually morally acceptable. is is the point
of Matthew :: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these
little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone
were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of
the sea.” Once we understand the evil of cruelty meat, we have a particular
obligation to witness to those who do not yet understand this form of
cruelty.
There has not been enough leadership on this issue by Catholic
theologians. One, however, has spoken out on one aspect of the issue,
and his words are worth quoting: “Certainly, a sort of industrial use of
creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a
liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just
caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity
seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that
comes across in the Bible.”
our Christian witness to the eschatological peaceable kingdom. See Berkman and
Hauerwas, “A Trinitarian eology of the ‘Chief End of All Flesh,’” and Berkman, “e
Consumption of Animals and the Catholic Tradition.”
. Ratzinger, God and the World, –.
