Newsletters
Winter Edition: 2004
Mind You, Abattoirs & Factory Farms Are Veterinary Approved!
For a donation to the SA of £250 a third world family may be given 7
sows with 1 boar to regularly impregnate them! And if one's donation is
no more than £17.50 at least one undernourished third world family will
have a share of the same cow! It may be, of course, that the method used
will have to have veterinary approval - who knows, it might even involve
the RSPCA? - but as such factors prevail in the midst of UK's animal
Belsens, this possibility will be of little comfort to animal activists
- Christian or otherwise. Indeed, I understand the short-sighted motive
of the SA in such a scheme. Their argument may be: 'surely the starving
millions come first?' Well, we've heard it all before. Furthering the
eating of dead animal flesh is to further the problem; and to foster
further cruelty is to do more long-term harm than any myopically
considered remedy.
I say again, thank God for the Salvation Army who so often do such
marvellous work. Indeed, as a young man I once signed at a Mercy Seat
their 'Articles Of War'! My only plea is that they might get back to the
priorities and standards of its three earliest generals William and
Catherine Booth and their son Bramwell. For here, indeed, are the
wonderful words of their noble Founder:
"While I cannot say that I was, in the first place,
led to abandon the use of flesh meat as an article of diet out of any
sympathy with the animal creation, I have often felt, nevertheless.
deeply thankful that I have no part in the grave responsibility for
the horrors that are inflicted on millions of inoffensive creatures,
killed with all manner of cruelty - some of it no doubt, quite
unavoidable, if they are to be killed at all - in order to supply the
wants of man. I believe that few really humane persons would touch
another morsel of animal food if they could once realise the agony
endured by the vast majority of these creatures in order to meet their
fancy.
The miseries of the frightened droves, the tortures of
the long journeys by rail, the unnameable agonies and abominations of
'the cattle boats', on which tens of thousands of unfortunate
creatures travel from other lands, and the combined terror and torture
which many of them suffer in the slaughterhouses, make a chapter too
dark for ordinary mortals to read. And yet it all lies between the
verdant meadows and the dainty morsel on your plate. At any rate,
those who refrain from eating flesh are free from responsibility for
all of this."
(General William Booth, The War Cry, 10th May, 1902.)
Go on to
Words To Take To Heart:
Return to Winter Edition: 2004
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