UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Reviews
DVD REVIEW: Documentary urges more 'compassionate' eating Bill Fentum, Nov 12, 2008
COURTESY PHOTO
By Bill Fentum Staff Writer
Eating Mercifully is filled with images you might never expect to see in the same video.
In old newsreel footage, chickens move freely in and out of wooden coops. A recent TV ad for one of the country’s biggest poultry producers shows a hen playfully typing memos to the CEO.
But then we see a factory farm, where egg-laying hens spend their lives crowded together into small battery cages. Other chickens are slaughtered for meat after an electric charge leaves them senseless.
If the contrast upsets us—or leaves us feeling a little queasy—that’s the point. The 25-minute documentary, available from the Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org), urges Christian viewers to make food choices based the biblical call to care for “the least of these.”
Factory farms began replacing family-owned livestock farms in the late 1950s after antibiotics made it possible to raise disease-free animals in larger numbers at reduced costs. Since then, U.S. meat consumption has increased more than 40 percent, driving production to record levels.
“I was raised on meat, and I was a steak lover,” Greg Boyd, an evangelical pastor in St. Paul, Minn., says in the video. “But about five years ago I became a vegetarian, mostly because I felt God calling me to have respect for all life.
“To me, the issue isn’t about animals having rights; it’s an issue of mercy. God could crush human beings, He could do anything He wants to us. But He’s merciful to us, He’s good to us. We need to extend that character to the animal kingdom.”
The nonpartisan Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released a study in April that said “good animal welfare can no longer be assumed based only on the absence of disease or productivity outcomes” and warned of risks to public health and the environment in areas where factory farms are located.
“We visited a chicken facility with six barns, probably about as long as a football field, with about 30,000 chickens in each barn,” says Robert Martin, the commission’s executive director. “It was an oppressive atmosphere, choked with dust and the smell of ammonia because the chickens stand in their own litter.”
Other sights in Eating Mercifully are just as painful: Animals are whipped and prodded, a fallen pig is dragged by its ear from one stall to another, a cow is pushed by a front loader into the bed of a transport truck.
“In the industrial model, animals are treated more like production units than living creatures,” Mr. Martin says. “It’s OK to jam them into cages where they can’t move because they’re just commodities that are going to be eaten.”
It’s possible to make a difference, viewers are told, without becoming vegetarians.
At Pasture Pride Farms in upstate New York, farmer Peter McDonald raises livestock on 220 acres of land. His cattle graze on grass instead of processed grain, while pigs grow outdoors and chickens are raised in cage-free pens. Mr. McDonald’s produce is only sold locally, but similar farms exist across the country.
“Supporting farmers who try to do the right thing—that’s a start down the path toward being responsible as a Christian, conscientious as a shopper and compassionate as a Christian,” says Elaine West, who runs a sanctuary for injured farm animals in Archer, Fla.
It’s a good argument. Eating Mercifully is tough to watch, but it won’t leave consumers feeling there’s nothing they can do.
COURTESY PHOTO
