Sir - Stephen Lambert (Letters, 6 July) asks why the Archdeacon of
Colchester links factory farming and hunting. The answer surely is
that both bring distress and death to sentient creatures. Can we
deny that animals have feelings?
Jeremy Bentham's reflections on animal rights are relevant here:
"The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can
they suffer?" Synod should have heeded some more 18th-century
voices, including that of the Revd Thomas Young, Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, who courageously condemned hunting, shooting and
fishing, quoting from Cowper on the particular scandal of the
"cassocked huntsman". Young also denounced the cruelty involved in
transport (Britain had an international reputation as "the hell of
horses"), in scientific research, in sport and in cookery. He listed
some of the more horrific atrocities that were part of food
production, and he condemned the hypocrisy of Christians in saying
their grace at mealtimes: "How absurdly impious is it to beg his
blessing upon a table which is furnished out in part by the abuse of
his bounty and the torture of his creatures."
Young added perceptively that we were more likely to get a curse
than a blessing from all this. He also saw that cruelty to animals
had a strong tendency to make us cruel to our own species (a truth
vividly illustrated by the artist, Hogarth).
It is deeply saddening to observe that, in the 20th century, so
many Christians who campaign vigorously against sexism and racism
are still not sufficiently enlightened to do battle with the hideous
evils of species-ism.
Dr Margaret Maison
Church Times
(13/7/90)
