Do Factory Farms Violate Catholic Teaching?

[blackforest]

The Church permits Catholics to consume and wear animals. Animal cruelty, however, is not permitted because we are to be responsible stewards of the earth. This priest outlines the teachings. Library : Cruelty toward Animals | Catholic Culture

If animals are raised specifically for a purpose, like minks for furs, then they should be treated with care and not with cruelty. The waste or the mistreatment of animals is an affront to our human dignity and thereby sinful. (Cf. the Catechism of the Catholic Church , No. 2418.)

The Scriptures were written millennia before our modern industrial food system. Is the way animals are treated in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs, a.k.a. factory farms), compatible with Catholic teaching? Or should Catholics speak out against these practices and seek out more ethically sourced animal products?

Before answering, consider researching CAFOs. Here’s a start. 'One thing I've learned about modern farming – we shouldn't do it like this' | Farming | The Guardian

 

[arvo]

Essentially this is another capitalisms vs socialism question.

In capitalistic society there is no regulation. The inner morality of consumers replace such regulation - it is expected that the collective moral force of the consumers will lead to the pressure to form ethical industries. Of course, noone have answer how to deal with those consumers that have no means for ethical action or that are selfish.

In social society there is regulation for the minimum standards and businesses crowed just over this standard or there are special high-value super-ethical businesses.

We should acknowledge the the poverty and greed and overexcessive competition is the source of this cruelty not only towards those animals but towards nature in general and towards other human beings which are put into poverty and exploitation by the primitive business sector of the capitalist society which exploits those people without choice.

So - there is no solution without eradiction of poverty/exploitation/excessive competition. Generally I see this as another example why we need transhuman/postcapitalist/communist policies of superabundance. My proposal is to us the technologies (e.g. hands free heactare or farms https://www.handsfreehectare.com/ https://www.handsfree.farm/) to end the human exploitation, to create society of superabundance and that will naturally lead to the increased welfare - both human beings and animals and plants. That is fully Catholic plan which is based on discernment, human capabilities and love towards neighbour.

 

[ZemD]

Yes, if you can afford it you should buy your meat from a local farm or from a 4-H youth at your county fair. The meat is higher quality, tastes better, and the animals have better lives.

Raising pigs for 4-H we treated them like pets and they lived great lives until they were sold at auction. They had lots of room, could go inside and outside as the pleased and when they learned to walk with a cane they took walks around the farm. We didn’t need antibiotics as they weren’t living in dirty or cramped conditions. And they didn’t need hormones as they had a good diet with lots of variety and lots of exercise to bulk up before they were sold.

 

[phil19034]

Essentially this is another capitalisms vs socialism question.

I’m sorry, but this is NOT capitalism vs socialism.

Socialism is NOT regulation. Capitalism can be regulated. Socialism is not social programs.

Socialism is when the government OWNS and/or directly controls the select businesses and/or industries.

For example: there is NOT a single socialist economy in Western Europe. Sweden, Denmark, etc are NOT socialist. They just have social programs paid by taxes because they are receiving a good amount of tax revenue due to their capitalist economies.

 

[OddBird]

Or should Catholics speak out against these practices and seek out more ethically sourced animal products?

The main reason I am, with few exceptions, vegetarian, is what I glimpsed in my own heart and the amount of cruelty I was willing to let pass just in order to satisfy my own greed and my own appetites. There was a point where I couldn’t see any longer how that wasn’t sinful.

I’m not sure one can generalize though. If someone genuinely needs animal protein, and the only source they can afford is industrial meat, that’s something else. It wasn’t my case, so I’ve stopped eating meat altogether unless I’m invited and the hosts cooked meat.

I give up sweets on Fridays instead

 

[KMC]

Generally I see this as another example why we need transhuman/postcapitalist/communist policies of superabundance.

Are there any historical examples you can provide where communist policies resulted in “superabundance?”

 

[arvo]

As soon as you start to regulate you acknowledge that the invisible hand of the crowd is failing, the collective wisdom of the “free” people (crowd) is failing. Regulation, government force is the essential division line between the capitalism and socialisms.

I have not checked the latest data that but today the central banks have balance sheet even over 20% of GDP. So - these are assets that are owned by the shareholders of the central bank (mostly governments), these are assets over which the clerks are making decisions.

Well - and we can compare the communist and capitalists decision making mechanisms. In communist countries the salaried clerks took the decisions based on the common good. In capitalist countries the salaried clerks of private companies driven by the greed (fund managers, asset managers, financial analysts, etc.) are making decisions. Yes, there are small business owners, but the big companies are governed quite differently.

 

[arvo]

I wonder whether you can lecture or raise awareness of ethical meet for the poor workers of gig economy, of Amazon warehouse workers, for the Uber drivers.

 

[arvo]

China is towards its way to communist society: https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4poli...nce-east-south/industry-science-innovation_en

Chine is becoming the most innovative and technologically advanced country in the world:

China Is Closing The Gap With The U.S. In R&D Expenditure [Infographic]

Its R&D investment is second only to US and is growing faster, so, soon it will be the biggest R&D investor on the Earth. And judgjing by its Space capacity, it will be the biggest power outside Earth as well (e.g. on Mars and Moon are those are becoming colonized in the 16th Century manner).

 

[phil19034]

@blackforest

I think slaughter houses (regardless of how small they used to be) have always been brutal, even in Jesus’s time.

The cities have always had brutal slaughter houses.

If you think about it for a moment, people who work in these industries need to kill animals in mass numbers. Seeing that much blood every day is bound to have a negative effect on them.

Farmers on the other hand, often have LESS animals and tend to know their animals before killing them for meat. So farmers tend to treat their food with much more respect & thankfulness.

But slaughter houses were designed to feed the cities (centuries ago). The main difference between a slaughter house in Jesus’s time vs today is simply the number of animals. Today, they kill more in one day. But slaughter houses in Jesus’s time were equally as brutal.

I think the BEST THING we can do is evangelization. People who work in slaughterhouses are exposed to this brutality every single day, and I’m sure it has a damaging effect on their spiritual health.

We need to befriend and evangelize people who work in these places. That’s the only real way things will change. Sure, we can make laws, but unevangelized people will find ways to get around the laws & still treat the animals as junk.

My point, making laws helps a little, but it doesn’t change the outlook that people who work in slaughterhouses have. So we need to find these people and evangelize them so they can treat our food with respect.

 

[arvo]

You can evangelize people, but if people have no money to make the ethically better choice, then what do you expect? Just mental confusion. People should have access to education, to move to better jobs, to create more value. And with this wealth the more ethical decision can be made and more humanity can be introduced into farming and handling animals and plants.

Poverty and excessive competition (all or nothing) is the source of this behavior. You can not change it by morals.

Morals can help if they change the voting patterns and then - through the policy changes the welfare improvres. But well - how can you vote for Republicans and Trump and expect the animal welfare improvement? What mechanisms can lead to that?

 

[choose_to_love]

so that’s a “No” to KMC’s question. got it.

 

[arvo]

Yes - sound and clear NO. There has not been any genuine communist society yet. Market Socialism as a Distinct Socioeconomic Formation | New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry clearly states that communism can exist only when the technology is matured. It was not matured enough in Marx times, it was not matured in Lenin and Stalin times (those criminal regimes were something that Marx called “rude communisms” and explicitly warned against them - communism introduced by force and not by natural development of technological revolutions).

But today’s robotics, automation, artificial intellgence, software, machine learning, self-improving systems (e.g. Juergen Schmidhuber's home page - Universal Artificial Intelligence - New AI - Deep Learning - Recurrent Neural Networks - Computer Vision - Object Detection - Image segmentation - Goedel Machine - Theory of everything - Algorithmic theory of everything - Computable universe - Zuse's thesis - Universal learning algorithms - Universal search - Kolmogorov Complexity - Algorithmic information - Super Omega - Speed Prior - Independent component analysis - ICA - Financial forecasting - Evolution - Reinforcement learning - POMDPs - Reinforcement learning economy - Hierarchical learning - Metalearning - Learning to learn - Self-Improvement - Genetic programming - Attentive vision - Active exploration - Theory of beauty - Theory of creativity - Theory of Humor - Facial Attractiveness - Low-complexity Art - Lego Art) can be the necessary and sufficient technological developments for communism to emerge naturally.

Sorry - I have lost my temper and my focus on my work and efforts. But agriculture and automation of agriculture (and resulting food security and complete eradication of hunger) is very dear themes to me. So - I am back to my works and will try to ignore all that is happening here. I just wanted to say - no always people are making unethical decision because of will. Sometimes there is no choice. Good luck!

 

[phil19034]

China is towards its way to communist society: https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4poli...nce-east-south/industry-science-innovation_en

Chine is becoming the most innovative and technologically advanced country in the world:
China Is Closing The Gap With The U.S. In R&D Expenditure [Infographic]
Its R&D investment is second only to US and is growing faster, so, soon it will be the biggest R&D investor on the Earth. And judgjing by its Space capacity, it will be the biggest power outside Earth as well (e.g. on Mars and Moon are those are becoming colonized in the 16th Century manner).

That’s because China has adopted SOME Capitalism in the past few decades. They stopped being 100% communist in terms of SOME economic factors.

HOWEVER, they still force people into select jobs. In China, they find their smartest people and FORCE them the perform jobs the govt wants them to tackle. (They do the same thing with athletes too… they find the most athletic people & force them into training regiments that go way beyond what the rest of the world would do)

In counties like the United States, if the most intelligent teen in the country wanted to be artist, no one in govt would stop that kid from being an artist. In China, that kid would be forced into a science field of the govt’s choosing.

In the US, if a gold medal Olympic hopeful decided that he/she has lost their love for their sport and wanted to quit, no one from the govt would care. In China, if that happened, the athlete would receive a visit from the police.

But ALSO, the Chinese people are very patriotic & very homogeneous. They don’t let people move into their country who will get in the way of the govt’s goals, etc. All the things that leftist blame Trump of doing with immigrants, the Chinese do with much more force.

Finally, they have over 1 billion people. When you have billion people, that easily means you have more gifted people to network together to come up with new ideas. If they were a free society, they most likely would have been much further ahead of where they are now.

 

[phil19034]

Market Socialism as a Distinct Socioeconomic Formation | New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry clearly states that communism can exist only when the technology is matured. It was not matured enough in Marx times, it was not matured in Lenin and Stalin times (those criminal regimes were something that Marx called “rude communisms” and explicitly warned against them - communism introduced by force and not by natural development of technological revolutions).

We will never have that until “food and matter replicators” (like the ones they have on Star Trek) are invented (if that’s even possible)

You have to eliminate the need for humans to do the jobs nobody wants to do.

However, by doing this, you also have a tendency to eliminate the Sanctity of Work (something Marx didn’t understand).

Marx was an atheist. So he failed to understand that hard work is holy. He failed to understand that humbling ourselves by doing work for others is holy.

A communist society cannot afford to let everyone pursue their dreams. Because food & shelter are taken care of already by the state, people don’t have a motivation to make compromises in the pursuit of their dreams. So govt has to force them by gunpoint to perform a job they don’t want to do.

In a capitalist society, while not everyone can pursue their dreams, people can make alternative choices that (while not their ideal choice) is one they can live with. They also, still have the option to save money and later pursue their dreams.

Example: I know of a man from Montana & Texas who wanted to eventually live a completely independent lifestyle. So he went to work (eventually for himself) and lived in a trailer until his late 30s & early 40s putting tons of money in the bank. At 46, he retired and is now sailing around the world with his family. He could only do this living in a Capitalist economy like the United States or Europe. In a communist economy, he would have never been allowed to retire to pursue his dream at 46.

In watching Star Trek, one often thinks that 23rd and 24th century Earth is utopian in the Star Trek universe. However, one of the things about the new Star Trek Picard series is that we get to see some of the NEGATIVE aspects of technology. People still use technology as an escape from real life, use technology for artificial pleasure, etc.

Money, technology, socialism & communism don’t make people happy. That’s something Marx failed to understand. What makes people happy is discovering their purpose. No matter how utopian a society becomes, people have discover their purpose in life for themselves.

And that’s something the Catholic Church (not government) can help with. First, we discover that our fundamental purpose is to be like God & to love God & to one day be with God. From there, then we can figure out how to best spend our time on earth so we reach our end goal of Heaven.

God Bless

 

[kapp19]

Harming human psychology, and its upshot (viz., maltreatment of humans) is the linchpin for understanding the “animal cruelty question,” as St. Thomas explains in the Summa Contra Gentiles… I see few people concerned, for instance, about trying to kill all kinds of unwanted animals - from wildcats to flies. Plants, too, are created by God… and they have life, of course.

We should be solicitous not to deprave our own minds out of some kind of spite or disregard for the reality of pain, but this issue, in my opinion, is very quickly taken too far, and there are much more important things to be concerned with right now… like abortion, which ironically is often supported by people who shrink at killing pigs and cows. As Chesterton said, “Where there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.”

 

[MNathaniel]

Essentially this is another capitalisms vs socialism question.

In capitalistic society there is no regulation.

Not the case so starts off on a false premise. Societies that are economically capitalist can also be regulated. Socialism and regulation are not synonyms.

 

[KMC]

And…they use Uygurs for slave labor…and…its not free…and roughly 40% live on less than $5.50 a day.

Certainly prior examples like the Soviet Union, the Soviet Bloc, Cuba, North Korea all show communism thus far to be an utter failure. Regarding China, such extreme poverty for so many people should not be called a success.

Lastly, the Catholic Church has spoken out against communism…the two are not compatible.
Might I suggest reading Divini Redemptoris…here is a single line:

Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse.

http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-.../hf_p-xi_enc_19370319_divini-redemptoris.html

 

[Anrakyr]

Essentially this is another capitalisms vs socialism question.

No it isn’t, it’s a moral responsibility vs needs or wants.

 

[choose_to_love]

Isn’t this a “no true Scotsman” (or no true communist) fallacy, though?