Background

• Intensive farming can include farming animals in tiny crates for their fur, particularly where it is reported that mink and sable farms often skin the animals alive for the benefit of humans who wish to wear fur or fur accessories.
• In the food industry, most animals live in crowded and filthy conditions, and suffer painful procedures such as:

  o Branding

  o De-horning

  o De-beaking

  o Having their tails cut off

  o Having their teeth sawn off
• The meat industry contributes to human starvation, since, for example, cattle consume around fifteen times more grain than they can produce as meat.

  therefore, It might be ethically preferable, therefore, to decrease meat production and increase that of grain and other crops.
• Genesis 2:15

  ‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.’
• Genesis 9:3

  ‘Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.’
• Genesis 1:28-30

  ‘God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”’

  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.’
• The point about speciesism is that we give less weight to the interests of beings who are not members of our species, simply because they are not members of our species; not looking at their individual characteristics, not looking at their capacities, or what’s good for them, or bad for them
• Current estimates are that about 795 million people are undernourished, having insufficient food to lead an active and healthy life.

  o This is particularly true in less economically developed countries, where around 12.9 per cent of the population is undernourished
• While Abba Macarius was praying in his cave in the desert


  1. A hyena suddenly appeared

  2. Began to lick his feet

  3. Taking him gently by the hem of his tunic

  4. Drew him towards her own cave

  5. He followed her
• Abba Macarius: '"I wonder what this animal wants me to do?"'
• When she had led him to her cave

  1. She went in

  2. Brought her cubs which had been born blind

  3. He prayed over them

  4. Returned them to the hyena with their sight healed
• Thanks offering

  • The hyena brought the man the huge skin of a ram and laid it at his feet
• He smiled at her as if at a kind person and taking the skin spread it under him