Animals are not sacred
Letter to the Editor
This is a response to a particular reason that Aaron Kreider gave for his choice to be a vegan. He held that animals should not be eaten by men because it causes the animals to "lead lives of pain." We must begin, therefore, by looking at the idea of animal suffering.
We as humans cannot form any accurate notion of what animal suffering is. We can be certain though, that the degree of their suffering is much different from our own. Cardinal Newman accurately states, "Brutes feel far less that man, because they cannot reflect on what they feel; they have no advertence or direct consciousness of their sufferings." Animals must suffer to some extent though, and it is wrong to add unnecessarily to these sufferings. The sentimentalism that treats animal pain as an evil as great as human pain, however, is unreasonable and ridiculous. Killing innocent human lives in the womb, for example, offers no comparison to butchering "helpless" cattle.
Whether as companions, means of work, for the benefit of medical advancement, as clothing or as food, animals were placed in the stewardship of men. "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that crawls upon the earth"(Genesis 1:26).
There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian, or even a vegan. However, if someone is trying to lead another to believe that eating meat is cruel because it causes an animal to suffer, that person is wrong. Animals were entrusted to the stewardship of man for his use.
Julie Shields
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Febrary 14, 2000
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, February 18, 2000
