PETA's Bruce Friedrich interviewed by SFGate

[Guest guest]

(Apologies if you already rec'd this; seems many of you didn't.)

 

Dear Friends,

 

In yesterday's SFGate (on-line version of the SF Chronicle), PETA's

Bruce (Mr. Alka) Friedrich had a very informative, intelligent

interview published under the title " Is Eating Meat a Catholic Sin? "

 

Regardless of your views on religion (and I don't agree with Bruce),

the piece had the opportunity to reach a large number people with the

animal' message. Bruce did an outstanding job of including many

important factory farm issues in his answers, as you can read below.

 

As can be expected when one takes a controversial and/or unpopular

stand, SFGate has been receiving letters critical of the article. If

you are so moved, please send a short, positive letter to SFGate in

support of their coverage of vegetarianism.

 

Thanks,

~ Joseph Connelly

Editor, VegNews

 

Following is the interview in case you missed it.

SFGate takes feedback at http://www.sfgate.com/select.feedback.html/.

Hank Pellissier (the interviewer) and be emailed directly at

hank.

 

http://tinyurl.com/2brq2

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2004/02/02/

urbananimal.DTL & type=universal

 

Is eating meat a Catholic sin?

 

Bruce Friedrich is a Catholic from the Midwest who was recently rated

No. 5 on Details magazine's 2003 list of " The 50 Most Influential

People Under 38 " -- ahead of Tiger Woods, Leonardo di Caprio and Justin

Timberlake. What has Friedrich done to deserve his high standing?

Surprise answer: He's an animal rights activist on the governing board

of the Catholic Vegetarian Society and the advisory board of the

Christian Vegetarian Society. He is also a founding member of the

Society of Religious and Ethical Vegetarians, and he's director of

vegan campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

I interviewed him via telephone as he was flying from PETA headquarters

in Virginia to an assignment in India.

 

Hi, Bruce. Your opinion is that Catholics -- and all other Christians

-- should be vegetarians?

 

Jesus' message is about love and compassion, but there is nothing

loving or compassionate at factory farms and slaughterhouses, where

billions of animals endure miserable lives and die violent deaths.

Jesus mandates kindness and mercy for all God's creatures. He'd be

appalled by the suffering that we inflict on animals today to indulge

our acquired taste for their flesh.

 

Catholics, and all Christians, have a choice. When we sit down to eat,

we can add to the violence, misery and death in the world, or we can

respect God's creatures with a vegetarian diet. I believe we're

obligated to make choices that are as merciful as possible, and we can

all do that at the dinner table with a vegetarian diet. There wonÕt be

any factory farms and slaughterhouses in heaven.

 

So, you think the God of Christians never wanted people to eat meat?

 

The Garden of Eden, God's perfect world, was vegetarian (Gen. 1:29-30),

and God called this nonexploitative relationship " good " (Gen. 1:31).

After Eden there were many, many years of fallen humanity, when people

held slaves, waged war, ate animals and committed various other violent

acts. But the Old Testament prophets tell us that the final, peaceful

Kingdom of God will be nonviolent and vegetarian; even " the lion will

lie down with the lamb, " according to the prophet Isaiah. That is, even

the carnivorous animals will go back to the vegetarian state. I find it

empowering that we can begin to live that vision now.

 

That's all very Old Testament. Is there any more recent church doctrine

that supports vegetarianism? Do you think eating meat is a sin?

 

The catechism says explicitly what we all know to be true in our

hearts: Causing animals to suffer needlessly is a sin. Since no one has

to eat meat, and in fact we'd all be better off without it, then it is

a sin to eat meat. The church has a way to go before it recognizes this

fact explicitly, but there it is, an official part of church doctrine.

 

The church will have to support a vegan diet eventually, but it may not

move to that position quickly. We in the Christian and Catholic

Vegetarian Associations are pushing, though! There was a marvelous

piece in the Vatican's paper a few years ago, a strong condemnation of

factory farming. It pointed out that God designed animals to raise

their families, to breathe fresh air, to feel the sun on their backs.

Modern farms donÕt allow animals to do any of these things -- theyÕre

playing God, basically, acting like they know better than God. And the

mutilations and drugs -- the processes -- are so cruel, merciless and

ungodly that IÕm convinced that all faiths will come to denounce eating

meat as surely as they came to denounce slavery; it's just a matter of

time.

 

What about hunting? Working in a slaughterhouse? Should those

activities be considered sinful?

 

I believe we're all challenged to live as mercifully and

compassionately as possible. If you choose to support cruelty and

violence when you could support kindness and compassion, that's

something you should change. Hunters should hunt with a camera.

 

Have you ever thought about becoming a Buddhist or a Hindu? They seem

more concerned with animal rights.

 

My faith is not a function of my mercy and compassion for animals. The

reverse is true: My concern for compassion is a product of my faith.

That said, I agree with Gandhi -- and the pope -- that what's important

is not your professed faith but how you live your life.

 

Tell me how you got involved in the animal rights movement.

 

I became a vegan in college after reading Francis Moore Lappé's " Diet

for a Small Planet, " because it helped me realize how a meat-based diet

contributes to environmental devastation and global poverty, as well as

animal suffering.

 

After college, I spent six years working in a homeless shelter and soup

kitchen in Washington, D.C. While I was there, a friend of mine sent me

a book written by Dr. Andrew Linzey, a theologian at Oxford University,

who argues that animals were designed with certain needs, desires and

species-specific behaviors and that animals have the same capacity for

pain and suffering as human beings. Any introductory physiology course

will teach you that birds, mammals and fish have basically the same

capacity to suffer as human beings.

 

Linzey's perspective is that denying animals the life they were

designed to have and inflicting pain on them for our convenience is

categorically unethical. Linzey believes that causing pain to an animal

is the moral equivalent of causing pain to a human being. The logic of

Linzey's argument spoke to me on a deep level. And, of course, if

animals have the same right to be free of pain as humans do, then we

certainly can't eat them, or experiment on them, or rip their skins off

to wear them as clothes, or beat them into doing senseless acts in

circuses and rodeos. It was really Linzey's argument that caused me to

become a animal rights activist and work for PETA.

 

Animal pain is as important as human pain? God's design for animals is

as important -- as valuable -- as God's design for humans?

 

God created every animal with needs, wants and a design for its life.

God designed pigs to root around in the soil and play with each other.

God designed chickens to make nests, lay eggs and raise their children.

Jesus compared his love for humanity to a hen's love -- not instinct,

love -- for her brood. God designed all animals with a desire for

sunlight, fresh air, fresh water and so on, and he designed all animals

to grow at a certain rate that won't tax their limbs and organs.

 

But all of these things are denied to animals who are turned into food

by the meat industries. Scientists are playing God by manipulating

animals to grow so quickly that their hearts, lungs and limbs can't

keep up. The upper bodies of chickens grow six to seven times faster

than they did 50 years ago, and turkeys can't even mate naturally

anymore. Everything natural is denied as they're packed into

excrement-laden sheds. Basically, God's will is denied completely by

the industries that have decided that they know better than God how

God's creatures should be treated.

 

On today's factory farms, animals are dehorned, debeaked and castrated

without anesthesia; they're crowded together into tiny spaces and

they're genetically bred so that many suffer lameness, crippling leg

deformities and bone breaks because their legs can't keep up with their

scientifically enhanced bodies; and, finally, they're trucked without

food or water to a hellish death at a slaughterhouse.

 

Does it seem odd to you that many devoted pet owners continue to eat

the meat of creatures that are as smart as their dogs and cats?

 

Everyone agrees that dogs and cats should be protected legally from the

worst abuses, but other animals that are raised for food have no legal

protection at all from mutilations without pain relief, drugging and

breeding that crippled them and so on. The disconnect must be pointed

out: If castrating a dog without painkillers is not OK, if drugging a

cat so that she grows up so fast she can't walk is not OK, if chopping

off the toes of a dog or cat is not OK, if slitting a dog or cat's

throat open and hacking off their limbs while they're still conscious

is not OK, then it is equally repugnant to do these things to any

animal.

 

When Cameron Diaz found out that pigs do as well on cognition tests as

3-year-old human kids, she gave up eating pork. In fact, pigs play

video games more effectively than some primates, and they interact with

one another in ways that have previously been observed only in

primates. Chickens also learn from one another, and they form complex

social groups and they are interesting individuals, just like any cat

or dog we might know.

 

You also think eating meat is unhealthy?

 

Last year, there were 50 million incidences of meat making people sick

in the USA, 50 million cases of meat-based pathogens, salmonella and E.

coli and campylobacter [a bacteria that causes food poisoning]. And,

now, of course, there's also mad cow disease.

 

Other than Francis Moore Lappé and Dr. Albert Linzey, are there any

other writers that have had a profound influence on you?

 

Alice Walker wrote the introduction to a book entitled " The Dreaded

Comparison, " by Marjorie Spiegel. In this book, Spiegel compares the

treatment of animals today to that of human slaves in the 16th through

19th centuries. Alice Walker agrees, saying, " The animals of the world

.... were not made for humans any more than black people were made for

whites or women were created for men. " That's quite a statement, and

it's true; the animal rights movement is a movement for justice, just

like abolition, suffrage, civil rights and women's rights.

 

Dr. Albert Schweitzer stated that " compassion...can only attain its

full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not

limit itself to mankind. " Nobel laureate Dr. Isaac Bashevis Singer

called species bias the " purest form of racism " and animal rights the

purest form of justice advocacy, because animals are the most

vulnerable of all the downtrodden. The animal rights perspective has

been historically embraced by a wide range of brilliant thinkers and

humanitarians, like Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein,

Harriet Beecher Stowe, C.S. Lewis, Susan B. Anthony, Leo Tolstoy, Dick

Gregory and Mahatma Gandhi.

 

Hank Pellissier -- a.k.a. Hank Hyena -- has been a columnist for

Salon.com ( " Naked World " ), SFGate ( " Odd Barkings " ), the S.F.

Metropolitan ( " Frisco Utopia " ) and the New Mission News ( " Civic

Stench " ). He's also executive director of the Hyena Comedy Institute

and co-director of a preschool called The Children's Lab.