I saw a sickening video on the news the other day. It showed dairy cows-some sick, some dying, and some trying to crawl with what looked like broken legs-prodded and beaten by workers at a slaughterhouse trying to get them up and moving to be butchered. The video was shot by an undercover investigator this past fall, and released a few days ago by the Humane Society.
See the video – WARNING – you won’t look at the freshly wrapped beef in the supermarket the same way again.
Where were the U.S. Department of Agriculture agents and inspectors that are supposed to be on watch at these places? This abuse couldn’t have been missed!
The video shows Hallmark Meat Packing Co. workers administering repeated electric shocks to “downed cows”–animals that are too sick, weak or otherwise unable to stand on their own. Workers are seen kicking cows in the face, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-intensity water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter.
This animal abuse video led to the largest recall of beef-143 million pounds-by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. But 37 million pounds had already gone to schools, and officials fear it has been eaten by children.
Hallmark Meat Packing Co., based in Chino, CA, sells beef to its sister company, Westlake Meat, which distributes it to various federal programs, including the National School Lunch Program.
Downed cows are more easily contaminated and may carry harmful diseases. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture regulations prohibit allowing disabled or contaminated animals into the food supply.
“This should serve as a five-alarm call to action for Congress and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture,” said Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society president. “Our government simply must act quickly both to guarantee the most basic level of humane treatment for farm animals and to protect America’s most vulnerable people–our children, needy families and the elderly–from potentially dangerous food.”
Westland Meat Packing Co. issued a statement saying the two workers caught on video abusing the cows had been fired, and their supervisor suspended. It didn’t say anything about what happened to the meat.
The man who became Saint Modhomhnoc (or Modomnoc) came from the royal line of Ui Neill of Ulster.
He wanted to be a priest and so he left Ireland and went to be educated under the great Saint David at Mynyw (Menevia, now Saint David’s) Monastery in Wales. All those who resided in the community were expected to share in the manual work as well as the study and worship; Modomnoc was given charge of the bees and he loved it. He cared for them tenderly, keeping them in straw skeps in a special sheltered corner of the garden, where he planted the kinds of flowers bees loved best.
Every time they swarmed, he captured the swarm very gently and lovingly and set up yet another hive. He talked to the bees as he worked among them and they buzzed around his head in clouds. It was if they were responding to his soothing words.
His years of study ended, and Modomnoc had to return to Ireland to begin his priestly ministry. While he was glad to be returning home, he knew he would miss his bees. On the day of his departure, he said good-bye to the Abbott, the monks, and his fellow students. Then he went down to the garden to bid his little friends farewell.
They came out in answer to his voice and never was there such a buzzing and excitment among the rows of hives. The monks stood a distance watching the commotion in wonder. “You’d think the bees knew,” they said. “You’d think they knew that Modomnoc was going away.”
Modomnoc resolutely turned and went down and boarded the ship. When they were about three miles from shore, Modomnoc saw what looked like a little black cloud in the sky in the direction of the Welsh coast. He watched it curiously as as it came closer, he saw to his amazement that it was a swarm of bees. It was a giantic swarm – all the bees from the monastery hives followed him out to sea!
Twice Modomnoc had the boat turn back and brought the bees back to their garden. On the third time his boat set sail Modomnoc prayed ferverently that the bees would stay in their pleasant garden rather than risk their lives at sea. But, for the third time, he saw the black cloud rise over the coast of Wales. This time, the boat did not turn back. Resigned to the will of God and the persistence of his faithful friends, he coaxed the swarm into a sheltered corner of the boat. There, much to the relief of the sailors, they quietly remained throughout the voyage.
When Modomnoc landed in Ireland, he set up a church at a place called Bremore, near Balbriggan, in County Dublin, and there he established the bees in a happy garden just like the one they had in Wales. The place is known to this day as “the Church of the Beekeeper.”
My thanks to Catholic Ireland and Irish Culture and Customs for this lovely story.
Pope Benedict XVI’s personal commitment to protecting the environment delights me and gives me hope. I am gratified to see an increasing amount of statements from the Holy See on the environment, particularly on global warming and energy consumption.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, affirmed this commitment during the session “Addressing Climate Change: The United Nations and the World at Work.”
In his February 13th address, Archbishop Migliore noted some of the steps the Vatican is taking to offset their carbon footprints. Solar panels are scheduled to be installed in the Vatican. The Holy See is also participating in a tree planting project in Hungary, which will “provide environmental benefits to the host country, assist in the recovery of an environmentally degraded tract of land, and provide local jobs.”
He highlighted the shared responsibility of individuals and nations in protecting the planet.
“It is incumbent upon every individual and nation to seriously assume one’s share of the responsibility to find and implement the most balanced approach possible to this challenge,” he said. “Sustainable development provides the key to a strategy that harmoniously takes into account the demands of environmental preservation, climate change, economic development and basic human needs.”
All Souls Interfaith Gathering, founded in 1999, prides itself on being one of the greenest churches in the Green State. Their new sanctuary is a model of ecological correctness: locally harvested wood, bamboo flooring, compact fluorescent lights and a furnace that will heat using grass, corn and wood pellets.
I’d like to think we’re cutting edge, said the Rev. Mary Abele. She heads a congregation of 70 that is growing every week. “I suspect some come now because of our environmental practices.”
The new sanctuary’s west-facing windows capture one of the most stunning views you’ll ever see–rolling farm land, Lake Champlain and the snow-capped Adirondack Mountains beyond.
When the building opened, Abele told the Burlington Free Press that the views are “inspiration to help us understand who we are in connection to the environment and the divine.” It’s a theme that runs through everything ASIG does.
“The building needed to blend with the surrounding site rather than stand out. (We needed to) play the building down, make it inviting, make it calm, play on the beauty of the site and surroundings, let the building be the shelter from which one can appreciate the whole,” said Marty Sienkiewycz of SAS Architects in Burlington, VT., who designed the project with congregation members.
At ASIG, the earth is woven into every service. “There’s a connection between the environmental and the spiritual,” said Laurie Caswell Burke, ASIG’s environmental coordinator.
On February 5, 2008 tornadoes hit Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. Students and professors at this Southern Baptist institution pondered God’s hand in the storm. What does it say about the nature of God that the campus was devasted by tornadoes; and that no lives were lost, despite $40 million in damage?
Greg Thornbury, dean of the school of Christian studies, wants to explore in class discussions God’s opague and sometimes baffling motives. As students returned to campus to identify their smashed and overturned cars, they wondered how anyone managed to survive, and they wrestled with the role God played.
“Basically, I know God kept everyone safe,” said one 18-year-old student, “I don’t know why God let it happen–but I really believe he was testing every student here.”
But Thornbury warned that guessing the mind of God is a tricky proposition. God’s motive for destroying the school, he said, “is probably in the realm of things that belong to the Lord…But what we can say is, look at the solidarity here. Why do we have people from the whole country rallying around this cause? I think that says something about what God has revealed to us.”
Thornbury said that the true lesson–that people should respond to suffering with love and compassion–was already manifesting itself on campus.
