Week of October 3, 1999
This week marks World Farm Animal Week. According to the
Farm Animals Reform Movement (F.A.R.M.) "....new policies and new trade
agreements designed to double world production and consumption of meat
and milk in the next 20 years are being aggressively pushed by the
western meat industry. Most of this expansion (83%) is planned to take
place in developing nations, through creation of massive factory farming
operations that would breed, cage, mutilate, manhandle, and slaughter up
to 50 billion additional animals per year by the year 2020." These
nations won't care about American attitudes towards cruelty to animals,
as the American dollar will be their only focus.
However, the focus of the 17th annual World Farm Animals
Day is to expose and prevent this tragic and dangerous expansion. There
are many activist organizations involved in this effort and this week we
pray for the success of their campaigns. World Farm Animals Day is the
day that the so-called food animals have a chance to be recognized. They
give up their lives to an uncaring society more interested in satisfying
their palates than they are their nutritional needs. We now know that
there are hundreds of substitutes for animal products and no animal
should ever have to die so that a person can live.
Let us pray for the frightened animals destined for
slaughter. Let us pray for the battery hens, veal calves, beef cattle
and pigs. For each and every animal who will face the horror of the
slaughter house during this week named in their honor, let us pray. Let
us also pray for the activists and organizers of this massive effort to
get this important word out, and for the thousands of compassionate
vegetarians and vegans who are setting a shining example.
For the animals,
Michelle Rivera
In lieu of a biblical quote, and in honor of St. Francis
of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals, I am sharing this prayer, his
prayer, so as to remind us to be nonjudgmental instruments for change:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
where there is hatred...let me sow love; where there is
injury.....pardon
where there is discord......unity; Where there is doubt......faith
where there is error.....truth; where there is despair......hope
where there is sadness....joy; where there is darkness........light.
O Divine Master, grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood.....as to understand,
to be loved.....as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are
pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
-- St. Francis
(St. Francis was a vegetarian in an era when that was
unheard of, he was truly the very first animal rights activist).
Quote of the day: "People try to hide the fact that they
are actually eating
someone who had a face, had a heart, someone who had a soul."
-- Paul McCartney
To learn more about F.A.R.M and World Farm Animals Day,
contact them at farm@farmusa.org
Go on to Not An
Angel by Unknown
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