Mostly Plants Rev. Catie Scudera

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Georgina Green
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1 In the mid-90 s, the popular cartoon show, The Simpsons, aired an episode wherein the middle daughter of the family, Lisa, became a vegetarian. In the first act, Lisa and her family visit the local petting zoo, and she s particularly taken with the smallest lamb. It wears a little pink bow, eats right out of Lisa s hand, licks her face; Lisa s in love. And, that same evening, the Simpson family is eating a normal dinner for them: mashed potatoes and lamb chops. Everyone else is happily munching away, but as Lisa stares at the two chops on her plate, she envisions the little lamb in the pink bow: and, the lamb says to her, Please Lisa! I thought you loved me! Lisa says aloud, I can t eat this! I can t eat a poor little lamb! What s the difference between this lamb and the one that kissed me? Her brother Bart replies, This one spent two hours in the broiler, before he takes a big bite. In act two of the show, Bart and both parents sing Lisa a congo line song about her choice: You don t win friends with salad, you don t win friends with salad! And in act three, Lisa s Hindu friend Apu and the actual Paul McCartney reassure her that vegetarianism is the right choice, but she needn t make a fuss about it to her family and friends. So, after last year s church auction, when I was asked to preach about ethical eating and the meat industry, I ll admit, I was nervous. I was trained early not to talk too much about being vegetarian. I was taught that if I talked about diet from a moral and spiritual standpoint, other people would consider me judgmental and self-righteous; I learned that, when I did talk about it, people would make illogical and incorrect excuses, like that lesser animals can t really feel pain or that nutritionally all humans need meat once or even twice a day, and that they wouldn t care if facts contradicted their feelings; I learned that people would mock me for my choice, just as Lisa s family did, saying things like, bacon s too tasty to give up, I ll eat twice as much as I should to make up for you. I fear that I ll hear these things in the receiving line today. But, the sermon topic was bought So, here I go: For me, eating a vegetarian diet is mostly a choice from the heart. We ve already heard Lisa s story. Then there s this one from our denominational magazine, the UU World. Laywoman Christine Organ writes:

2 One spring morning a couple of years ago, we returned from church, walked into the kitchen, and were greeted by an army of ants. The tiny little critters were everywhere on the counter, in the tile grout, and under the radio. I grabbed a paper towel, reached under the sink, and pulled out the Raid, pointing it at the ants. My oldest son, who was about seven at the time, saw what I was doing and came running into the kitchen. Respect all beings! he shouted. Respect all beings! He grabbed the Raid from my hand and gently scooped the ants onto the paper towel before setting them free outside. I stared at him for a minute before reluctantly, but gently, ushering a few ants outside myself. When I asked him about his sudden passion for saving ants, he told me his religious education class had just talked about the Seventh Principle of Unitarian Universalism: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part, or, in second-grade language, Respect all beings. I nodded. Saving ants suddenly didn t seem so odd. Not killing ants, not killing animals for meat, is showing basic respect for all beings. And, then there s the Mahatma s story. I believe what Gandhi and other Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains believe, that if we kill other beings to eat, we bring violence into our bodies: There is a great deal of truth in the saying that [we] become what [we] eat, he wrote. The more violent the food, the more violent the body. Gandhi wasn t the only vegetarian activist who believed that non-violence applied to all areas of life; Gandhi s friend, Russian author Count Leo Tolstoy, wrote, If [a person] be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which [s]he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling killing and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food. Labor rights activist Cesar Chavez wrote, Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting, bullfighting, and rodeos are cut from the same fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves. I believe my diet is part of my spiritual practice to become more kind, compassionate, empathetic. There are these deep spiritual reasons for eschewing meat and animal byproducts. But, there are also ethical reasons, for the facts about the meat producing industry in America are alarming and revolting. 2

3 Though humans have domesticated and eaten certain animals for generations, in the past fifty to one hundred years, we ve industrialized meat, milk, and eggs. Beginning in the early 1900 s, chicken farmers realized they could keep egglaying hens confined in small battery cages eating corn because of scientific advancements in antibiotics and vitamins in other words, they could keep hens alive and laying eggs even though they never went outside and never ate what chickens had evolved to eat. The whole United States meat industry rapidly transitioned to factory farming to accommodate American taste. With Americans today eating on average over two hundred pounds of meat a year about seventy billion pounds overall the meat industry must slaughter about nine billion animals annually. Animal welfare has been of little concern during this transition. At a confined animal feeding operation, or a CAFO factory farm, there can be twenty thousand chickens living in a single indoor enclosure, as pictured on your order of service. Pigs and cattle at feedlots experience similarly crowded and inhospitable living arrangements. Male offspring of both dairy cows and egglaying hens are near-immediately taken from their mothers and sent for slaughter, the boy calves to become veal and the boy chickens simply to be ground up and disposed of. In all these cases, the animals involved are intelligent enough emotionally intelligent enough to know that something is terribly wrong, that they are being mistreated, that they are suffering. Social psychologist and animal rights activist Dr. Melanie Joy writes, From the moment they are born, these animals are kept in intensive confinement where they may suffer from disease, exposure to extreme temperatures, severe overcrowding, violent handling, and even psychosis From a business standpoint, animal welfare is a barrier for profit, as it costs less to produce animals and discard those who die prematurely [ an estimated five hundred million animals a year ] than it does to care for them adequately. The reality of factory farming disgusts me. Perhaps you ve heard the Hindu term for compassion, a-himsa, which literally means do not injure. The meat industry in the United States is full of himsa, full of injury, for the nine billion animals a year who are killed in our country for food. 3

4 The most obvious himsa in the meat industry is, of course, toward the animals. But, there is a terrible human cost to factory farming, both for slaughterhouse workers and for all of us impacted by industrial-sized farming pollution. As I mentioned, many states have laws that protect slaughterhouses from investigation by journalists or activists But that doesn t mean that some folks haven t snuck in to watch what happens to the animals and to the workers. One university professor, Timothy Pachirat, went undercover at a cattle slaughterhouse for half a year, and noted that one worker would be responsible for shooting a cow between the eyes every twelve seconds. Another professor, James McWilliams, writes, Slaughterhouse employees are not only exposed to a battery of physical dangers on the cut floor, but the psychological weight of their work erodes their well being. As one former employee attests : The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] for any period of time that let s you kill things but doesn t let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that s walking around in the blood pit with you and think, God, that really isn t a bad looking animal. You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them. I can t care. Professor McWilliams continues, It will come as no surprise that the consequences of such emotional dissonance include domestic violence, social withdrawal, drug and alcohol abuse, and severe anxiety Slaughterhouse workers, in essence, were desensitized, and their behavior outside of work reflected it. In our modern society, we who are of relative privilege enjoy the fruits or should I say, the meats of the traumatizing labor of those workers and the emotional devastation in their homes and communities. And, of course, nine billion plus animals a year produce a lot of waste. In a 2010 report, the United Nations determined that raising livestock for meat, milk, and eggs accounts for fourteen-point-five percent of global-greenhousegas emissions. The meat industry worldwide has enormously negative impacts on water and air quality, requires major deforestation, and causes significant biodiversity decline on land and in the sea. Just earlier this year, Tyson Foods 4

5 the largest meat-producing company in the world was discovered to cause more water pollution than any single fossil fuel company. And I know you all have heard about cow flatulence and methane, a greenhouse gas produced in cows digestive systems because we feed them cheap, wrong food; if we farmed our cows more ethically, we d have less methane clogging up our atmosphere and heating up our planet. Overall, the UN wrote that agriculture, particularly of livestock, is second only to fossil fuel use when evaluating the human impact on our climate. Their report said, Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth, increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products. So what can we do, if we decide that we will care about animal welfare, worker welfare, and the effect of our diets on climate change? There s the obvious drive of this sermon: We can change our diets to more closely reflect our principles of justice, equity, and compassion, of respecting the interdependent web of all existence, of recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of all beings. As journalist and activist Michael Pollan put it, we can eat food, not too much, mostly plants. As people living in the United States, with such a high average meat consumption rate, any number of us becoming vegetarian or vegan would make a big difference; indeed, one recent study predicted that global adoption of vegetarianism would reduce food-based emissions by sixty-three percent and free up resources to feed billions more people annually. If going vegetarian or vegan doesn t feel like it s in the cards for you or your family, reducing meat intake to one meal a day also makes a difference. We can also buy that meat and plants, for that matter from smaller, local, fairlystaffed, more sustainable, more humane, pesticide- and antibiotic-free farms; that s what my meat-eating better half does. We can even do that together here at church, committing ourselves to use our collective purchasing power to support companies certified as humane and fair trade when buying food for fellowship events and social hour. In our national denomination s 2011 Statement of Conscience on Ethical Eating, Unitarian Universalists were encouraged to a number of actions beyond 5

6 diet. We can support access to ethically-produced, nutritious food for people of all incomes by lobbying for proper grocery stores in food deserts and by supporting community gardens and food pantries, like the ones we have here in Needham. We can participate in marches and protests in solidarity with agricultural and other food workers who seek safer working conditions, reasonable hours, and fair wages; there s a Fight for $15 movement right here in Greater Boston. Lastly, we can advocate for labeling measures with robust standards that alert consumers to whether farm animals are being treated humanely. Here in Massachusetts, we can even vote this fall on this issue don t worry, I can talk to you directly about ballot measures, though not about candidates! you won t ever figure out who I m voting for! Ballot Question 3 is An Act to Prevent Cruelty to Farm Animals, banning both the cruel confinement of veal calves, egg-laying hens, and mother pigs within the Commonwealth itself, and even the import of meat and eggs produced in such inhumane ways. But to give up or reduce meat and animal byproduct consumption means we have to make a change, means we have to defy social convention of American society. That s not always easy. I m reminded of the words from Rabbi Jack Riemer on the occasion of the Jewish High Holy Days, which begin tonight: Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds, and animals turning comes instinctively. But for us turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong; 6

7 It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday s ways. God, help us to turn from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith. May this season indeed inspire us to turn away from callousness to sensitivity, away from violence to love, away from consumption to sustainability. May it be so. Blessed be, and amen. 7

JOYFUL, COMPASSIONATE EATING

JOYFUL, COMPASSIONATE EATING HONORING GOD S CREATION In many ways, plant-based diets honor God. They help us become healthy, joyful, effective servants of God; and they avoid the animal cruelty, environmental