We welcome back guest writer Noah Guthrie. Born in Scotland, raised in Nashville, Noah serves as A Rocha USA’s Nashville Conservation Coordinator.
“Maybe I’ll be brave enough,” I told myself. “Maybe I’ll be brave enough to kill the duck.”
It was the fall of 2018, and I was one of a dozen interns working at the Brooksdale Environmental Centre. With a reedy wetland, a curling belt of Douglas firs, and a mini village of white-walled, brown-beamed homes, Brooksdale is A Rocha Canada’s base of operations in British Columbia. Their work ranges from restoring riparian plant life to leading educational hikes, sharing organic crops, and hosting spiritual retreats. I worked with the conservation science team during my time there.
That evening, though, following our communal meal at the Guest House, the interns had received an invitation from our animal caretaker, Tim, to watch him slaughter some of his ducks. He’d also let us kill one ourselves, if we wanted to.
That might sound like a cruel proposition, but the goal was to cultivate empathy and gratitude. Every day, God sustains us through the lives of other creatures - whether scaled, feathered, hoofed, or rooted - but in the age of pre-packaged chicken nuggets and microwave meals, it’s easy to forget where our food comes from. Tim was trying to remind us of the sanctity of eating: just as various bugs or frogs give their lives for the ducks, the ducks give their lives for us.
After leading us to the pen, Tim hung one of his ducks upside-down, since this would let it bleed out faster, sparing it unnecessary pain. Then, he took his knife, nestled the steel against the bird’s feathery neck, and made a decisive tug.
Life blossomed from the wound, and the duck spasmed like a fish on a wire. After several seconds - to our horror - we realized that the tremors weren’t stopping. Tim winced, then fed his blade into the creature’s mouth to make a second cut, trying to staunch its pain.
By the time the bird stilled, I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to kill a duck, even by humane methods. When Tim offered his knife to the interns, I let one of the others take it.
I went vegetarian when I was about 16, a couple of years before my time at Brooksdale, but it wasn’t because I thought it was innately immoral to eat meat. Genesis 1 does seem to describe Eve and Adam as vegetarians (Gen. 1:29-30), but God later gave Noah and his family permission to eat animals (Gen. 9:1-4), provided they didn’t consume the creatures’ blood. The blood was considered sacred, a symbol of the creature’s life, and was reserved for rites of atonement (Lev. 17:10-11). In this way, God reminded the Israelites of the sanctity of non-human life, whether at the table or the altar.
Originally, I became vegetarian because I didn’t want to eat something I wasn’t willing to kill myself. It was only later that I learned more about the issues of animal cruelty and environmental degradation that plague much (though not all) of our meat and dairy industry.
This phase of my dietary journey began with a high school discussion group called “The Bothered,” led by a serene yet charismatic student named Lauren. Composed of teens from a largely Christian homeschool cooperative, the point of this group was to let ourselves be bothered by (in other words, to care about) social issues like gun ownership, poverty, LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, and animal cruelty. The latter two topics were why Lauren, as well as a number of other students there, were vegetarians themselves.
According to a 2019 estimate from the Sentience Institute, about 99% of farmed animals in the U.S. live on factory farms. Common practices in these facilities include confining pregnant pigs to gestation crates, packing egg-laying hens into battery cages, injecting cows with mastitis-inducing growth hormones, and carrying out a variety of painful physical alterations, such as castration, debeaking, dehorning, branding, and tail docking, without anesthesia (see the Animal Welfare Institute).
Such practices are a desecration of the creatures that God created “good” (Gen. 1), and that God actively cares for (Ps. 104). As David Clough points out in his astute theological treatment of the factory farm industry, we know that Jesus ate meat (Lk. 24:41-43, Jn. 21:10-15), but first century Israelites didn’t raise animals in the intensive manner that we do today, so Jesus’ diet doesn’t justify the consumption of inhumanely produced meat and dairy. SARX, a Christian animal welfare nonprofit, is another good source of faith-based perspectives on these issues.
As for the environmental impact of factory farms, some estimate that the meat and dairy industry contributes “around 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gases each year,” which is “roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today” (see Moskin’s article in The New York Times). In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) went so far as to claim that eating fewer (not none, necessarily, but fewer) animal products “could contribute one-fifth of the mitigation needed to hold warming below 2°C” (IPPC).
These kinds of considerations, which I gathered through “The Bothered” and my subsequent research, eventually led me to become mostly vegan, with occasional exceptions for things like certified humane eggs or food served among friends. My goal isn’t to abolish animal products, but to voice my support for the reform of our food industry, aspiring for a system that’s humane and sustainable.
Though it can be hard to find animal products that are produced humanely and sustainably, checking with local, small-scale farms is a good place to start, and you can find some products at the grocery store with trustworthy animal welfare labels, too. I recommend referencing these two guides from the Animal Welfare Institute and A Greener World, which offer insights on which labels are the most trustworthy. These guides also rank some labels related to organic and restorative agriculture practices - which is important for me to remember as a vegan, because it can be easy to forget that even vegetables can be raised in ways that harm the environment.
One obstacle to ethical eating, as well as to the reform of our food system in general, is that we rarely see the creatures that suffer on factory farms. We don’t see the sows in their gestation crates or the hens as they’re debeaked, and though we know that this industry emits a huge amount of greenhouse gases, that isn’t something we can easily visualize while buying milk or beef at the grocery store. As is the case with many injustices, the supply chain hides these issues from us.
Yet, no creature’s suffering escapes the sight of God. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reassures his disciples that God is always watching them by asking, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matt. 10:29). If even this tiny songbird perishes, it perishes in the palm of God’s hand.
Yes, God sees the pig, the chicken, the cow, and the duck, no matter how cheaply they’re sold in our markets. When we eat in a way that honors these creatures, we can choose to see them, too.
Eating ethics look a little different for everyone. Please feel free to share about your own journey with food choices by emailing “noah.guthrie@gmail.com”!
Also, for any who feel led to give, I’ve started a fundraiser to support my new position as A Rocha USA’s Nashville Conservation Coordinator. You can find my fundraising page at this link: https://arocha.us/guthrie
