Love and life to all creation
Scripture: They shall not hurt nor destroy in All My Holy
Mountain." Isaiah 11:9

BORN FREE For this indignity

A REFINEMENT OF CRUELTY. . . The
geese are strapped down to boards and an electric force feeder is used
to stuff them with grain. Can you now eat pate de fois gras??
"Behold I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the
face of all the earth and every tree in which is the fruit of a
tree-bearing seed; to you it shall be for meat." GENESIS 1:29
"...and what doth the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" MICAH 6:8

UNWANTED Saved from a watery grave

SPORT? Surely not

THE FUR TRADE Agonisingly deprived of their
life so that women can wear their skins. What price luxury?

Skinned alive - for ladies' shoes and handbags

FACTORY FARMING Deprived of natural conditions
and freedom of movement

VIVISECTION LABORATORY Inoculated with
syphilis Forced to chain-smoke Clamped for some unspeakable
torture

Birds - SLAUGHTER What you do when
you eat meat
The KILLING FOR FOOD table is next in the
sequence and has a different preface to those of previous FoL leaflets:
The pictures on the foregoing pages are far from comprehensive but may
serve to give some idea of what actually happens to animals to satisfy
the misguided belief that they must be sacrificed that we may feed,
heal, clothe and entertain ourselves. This is moral pollution at its
worst and most subtle, of which ALL are guilty who create the demand for
the products of killing and cruelty.
Live on the fruits of the
earth.
At the foot of the table there are acknowledgements:
Our thanks for help in the production of this leaflet are due to:
The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection.
National Society for the Abolition of Factory Farming.
National Equine (and smaller animals) Defence League.
The Scottish Anti-Vivisection Society.
Compassion in World Farming.
Captive Animals Protection Society.
Beauty Without Cruelty.
Oeuvre d'Assistance aux Betes d'Abbatoirs.
Syndication International.
Excerpt from the report from the Church and Society Consultation
of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, meeting at Annecy, France in
September 1988.
"The ethic of the liberation of life is a call to Christian action. In
particular, how animals are treated is not "someone else's worry', it is
a matter of our individual and collective responsibility. Christians are
called to act respectfully towards 'these, the least of our brothers and
sisters.' This is not a simple question of kindness, however laudable
that virtue is. It is an issue of strict justice. In
all our dealing with animals, whether direct or indirect, the ethic for
the liberation of life requires that we render unto animals what
they are due, as creatures with an independent integrity and value.
Precisely because they cannot speak for themselves from the
shackles of their enslavement, the Christian duty to speak and act for
them is the greater, not the lesser.
"In facing this new challenge - this challenge to liberate all life, the
animals included - Christians should aspire to two ideals: 1. Seek
Knowledge, 2. Act justly.
"The first ideal enjoins us to break the habit of ignorance when it
comes to how animals are being treated. It bids us to ferret out the
truth, to make the invisible visible, to make the obscure clear. The
second ideal bids us to make our own life a living expression of justice
towards God's creation, to bring peace to our own lives even as we work
to bring peace to the world. Indeed, we are unlikely to succeed in doing
the latter if we fail in doing the former. There is little hope, that
is, that we can change the world if we cannot even change ourselves: in
the choice of the cosmetics and household products we use, the clothes
we wear, the food we eat, and the entertainment we patronise. The ethic
of liberation of life begins at home"
Members of the Christian community are therefore encouraged to act
according to such guidelines as the following:
1. "Avoid cosmetics and household products that have been carefully
tested on animals. Instead, buy cruelty free items.
2. "Avoid clothing and other aspects of fashion that have a history of
cruelty to animals, products for the fur industry in particular.
Instead, purchase clothes which are 'cruelty free'.
3. "Avoid meat and animal products that have been produced on factory
farms. Instead, purchase meat and animal products from sources where the
animals have been treated with respect, or abstain from these products
altogether.
4. "Avoid patronising forms of entertainment that treat animals as mere
means to human ends. Instead, seek benign forms of entertainment, ones
that nurture a sense of the wonder of God's creation and reawaken that
duty of conviviality we can discharge by living respectfully in
community with all life, the animals included."
Printed by kind permission of Rev. Freda Rajotte, secretary of the
sub-unit on Church and Society of the World Council of Churches, 150,
Route de Ferney, P.O. Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland, which
produced the report, "Liberation of Life".
It is not an official statement but does provide a starting point
for Christians as they set out to widen their love to embrace all
creation, animal, environmental as well as human.
Letter from THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS - The Right
Reverend Dr. George Carey; The Palace, Wells, Somerset, BA5 2PD:
Mrs. M. Lawson,
Nirvana,
12 Argyle Street,
Inverness IV2 3BA
17th April 1990
Dear Margaret,
Thank you for your letter of the 10th April enclosing a report of the
World Council of Churches 'Liberation of Life'. I am grateful to you for
sending me this and all power to your elbow as you seek to drive home to
people's conscience an ethic that concerns the whole of God's creation.
Yours warmly,
+GBW,
(Dictated but not signed personally owing to absence)
Extract from "The Ethics of Meat Eating" by Hugh Montefiore
Reproduced with permission of The Church Times; 25/5/90
According to the scriptures mankind has an affinity with God, and we are
made "in God's image". This involves us being given dominion over all
living things, but that does not mean that we can do what we
like with them.
As for eating meat, according to Genesis I, animals are to eat grass,
while man is to eat grains and fruit. In other words unfallen man is
a vegetarian. As at the start, so at the end. Isaiah tells us that
in the last days "the cow and the bear shall feed, their young lie down
together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox...They shall not hurt
nor destroy in all my holy mountain." Vegetarianism, according to the
scriptures, far from being "unnatural", belongs to both the Garden of
Eden and Paradise Regained. Eating flesh is a mark of Paradise Lost.
After the wickedness which caused the flood, Noah is told: "Every moving
thing that moves shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green
plants, so I give you everything." And the result of eating flesh? "The
fear and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, all
birds of the air, everything that creeps, all the fish of the sea..."
That actually happens.
Modern methods of farming can be cruel (did you know that battery hens
often arrive to be stunned with broken bones, because they cannot take
proper exercise?); and I find it very offensive to feed up animals just
so as to eat them. I myself believe - but I'm sure most readers will not
- that the best thing that could result from Mad Cow disease would be
that world beef production should cease. An ox consumes ten times as
much grain as a human, and for the last three years the growing world
population has outstripped world food production. Cattle worldwide
produce huge quantities of methane gas from their digestive tracts which
contribute considerably to the warming of the planet. My guess is that
over the next century beef-eating,
pace Mr Gummer, will be
gradually phased out.
Available as a fold-out pamphlet for a small donation from: The
Fellowship of Life, 43 Braichmelyn, Bethesda, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 3RD,
U.K.