Response to Unitarian-Universality Draft on Ethical Eating
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Norm Phelps

The draft currently being circulated for comments shows disappointingly little concern for the suffering of animals and absolutely no concern for their killing.

The Unitarian-Universalist Association is preparing to issue an official position paper—known as a Statement of Conscience (SOC)—on ethical eating. The draft SOC can be found online - www.uua.org/socialjustice/issuesprocess/currentissues/ethicaleating/172671.shtml

The draft currently being circulated for comments shows disappointingly little concern for the suffering of animals and absolutely no concern for their killing. It explicitly refuses to endorse a vegetarian or vegan diet. The comments in the PDF were submitted to the Commission on Social Witness (CSW), which oversees the drafting and approval process, in an effort to bring to their attention some of the moral failings and factual misstatements with which the draft SOC is replete.

Sadly, I have been told by David May, chair of the CSW, that my comments will not even be considered because the bylaws of the Unitarian-Universalist Association permit only congregations—not individual UUs such as myself—to comment.

The draft SOC is a sad and shameful episode in the history of liberal religion and the Unitarian Universalist Association. I can only hope and pray that compassion and common decency will ultimately prevail over appetite, custom, and a desire for consensus so strong that it obstructs moral progress.

Read Comments on the Draft SOC “Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice”


Return to Animal Rights Articles