The Blind Eye

This infuriates me.

The incredible hypocrisy of Mendell in his statement -- "We are shocked, saddened and sickened by what we have seen today," Mendell said. "Operations have been immediately suspended until we can meet with all of our employees and be assured these sorts of activities never again happen at our facility." -- is simply amazing. This type of abuse has been recorded over and over again for well over ten years.

Management is well aware of these practices; there have been hundreds of interviews with former and current employees at many plants which speak of these atrocities. What is amazing is that they are not similar acts, but IDENTICAL, leading one to believe that this is SOP for these plants.

The nonsense of having USDA inspectors and vets located on-site has been shown for what it is many times. Just the speed of the line makes it impossible for the inspectors to keep up, and anytime outside consultants or OSHA personnel show up, their visit is known for days in advance and the plant 'cleans up' for the inspection.

The USDA actually has the audacity to say this!

Why is that incredible? Well, because they have staff ON-SITE -- did they simply MISS the activities?

And then they lay the blame at the feet of the HSUS with this little self-righteous blurb -- "It is unfortunate that the Humane Society of the United States did not present this information to us when these alleged violations occurred in the fall of 2007. Had we known at the time the alleged violations occurred, we would have initiated our investigation sooner, and taken appropriate actions at that time."

Let me ask them this: Where were your inspectors when these events took place?

Christians have abdicated their responsibility as stewards of God's creation -- this is not about vegetarianism vs. non-vegetarianism, this is about basic humane treatment of animals. The animal rights groups that are out there often have agendas which are directly counter to the Christian beliefs (witness people like Peter Singer who believes that there is no difference between an animal and human beings), so do not think that I am saying these groups are correct, what I AM saying is that we are incorrect.

The two things that I often hear from the Christian community are:

(1) - "I don't know anything about meat preparation, and I don't want to" or
(2) - "God gave us the right to eat animals starting with Noah, so what is the point?"

There are several problems with this, but let's just look at one -- Where does God say ABUSE, MAIM, and TORTURE these animals before slaughtering and eating them?

It is high time that Christians (who seem to want to be involved in anything politically or socially which improves their lot in life) begin to speak out against this type of wanton and horrific practice. If you want to put your blinders on, and actually believe what Hallmark and the USDA are trying to pass off, then I pity you!

Go read up on the abuses recorded over DECADES within the meat-packing industry, and then tell me that this is an isolated incident!

Whether you want to continue to eat meat or not is not my concern, what IS my concern is that we Christians go blissfully through life, ignoring this issue.

Read up on the issue, take the time to understand where your food comes from, read Slaughterhouse, or Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs. Actually educate yourself before you react to this post.

We believe that we were made in the image of God (imago dei): do you really believe the God who created everything and saw that it was good does not notice our apathy?