Animals deserve to be treated humanely: Your Say

Letters to the editor:

Thank you for publishing columnist Kirsten Powers’ piece “It’s time for evangelicals to speak up for animals.”

The animal rights movement is the logical successor to the other major social justice movements of the second half of the 20th century: the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement and the gay rights movement.

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Voices such as Powers’ are powerful reminders that animals are living, sentient individuals who deserve compassion and respect. Our factory farm industries today use animals as nothing more than profit-making widgets. It is indeed an evil that should not be tolerated in any respectable society.

Hilary Spreiter; San Diego

Kirsten Powers: It's time for evangelicals to speak up for animals

Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:

Great piece on the “Evangelical Statement on Responsible Care for Animals” released last week! God calls on us to care for all of creation. Treating all animals — including those on factory farms — humanely is part of that mandate.

— Lewis Bollard

What the animal welfare organizations want to do is stop the consumption of meat. To do this, they exaggerate instances of animal cruelty and deride legitimate methods of animal husbandry. They get away with this because the urban population of the United States is separated from farming. They complain about factory farms, but modern farming methods are a main reason our society has prospered.

— Randy Janssen

It’s kind of hard to stand up for animals when we’re still trying to get the slaughter of human beings stopped.

— Albert Wiersch