Not someone you associate with a Confined Animal Feeding Operation
Noah built the first CAFO. God spoke to Noah and told him a great flood was going to occur and that in order to save the animals he needed to build an ark so they wouldn’t drown. He gave him specific instructions about its dimensions and what to build it out of. People mocked Noah but he knew that God had entrusted the care and perpetuation of all species to him and it was something he took very seriously. You see, he knew something they didn’t.
It was good common sense that told Noah that in a flood, without shelter and his care, the animals would die. Most of them couldn’t swim for long and eventually they would tire and drown a slow, torturous death. It makes sense to livestock producers that if we care about livestock we should protect them from weather, wild animals and even the aggression of their own species.
Noah had only two of each animal but he had all the species. He had to make sure the cats didn’t eat the mice, the wolves didn’t eat the pigs and the elephants didn’t sit on the chickens. He knew that if he didn’t protect the domestic animals, the ones he used for food, they were in danger not only from the elements and the wild animals but also from their own kind. Remember, Noah started out with two of each but there are many breeds of pigs and many kinds of chickens. He had to make sure the Banty rooster didn’t kill the Leghorn and the Hampshire sow didn’t overpower the Landrace sow. Because if one breed injured or killed the male or female of the other, that breed couldn’t procreate once the waters subsided as God said they would. That breed would have been lost, forever.
Noah knew that pecking orders existed naturally and the boss sow always gets all she wants. God put the care and future of these animals in Noah’s hands. He told him the flood was coming. What kind of a good and faithful servant would Noah have been if he allowed them all to have free range of the ark? If he hadn’t used what he knew about the nature of the animals to protect them? The answer is pretty clear I think. He would have been letting God down. I hope we’re not letting God down.
As the biggest-brained animal going right now I hope we’re using all that grey matter to take care of all the animals. That goes for protecting the weakest laying hen to the smallest mouse species in an Amazon rain forest that most of us will never see. It also goes for taking care of the rest of our species, us homo-sapiens. There’s a lot of us and we all have to eat. Some of us live in areas with God given resources to produce food and some of us live in areas while not God forsaken, can’t begin to produce enough food for our numbers. Like Noah, it’s our charge to look after others, especially now that there’s more than just our family here as opposed to who he had on the ark with him.
1 Timothy 5:8 says “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
I hope we’re being good stewards.
I don’t know where you land on the issue of how we go about raising animals for food. I don’t know if you draw any parallels between biblical teachings and what we’re doing today and how we treat animals. I don’t even know if you eat animals in the first place. What I do know though is that you have an opinion on all of these. I hope the above might give you food for thought at least.
I write each week about things that affect our lives, sometimes with a religiousy sort of bent. This would be one of those kind. If you would like to read more or see what other kinds of stuff I write, click here to go to my blog’s home page. If you like what you read I hope you’ll subscribe. Subscribing is free and means you will get an email on Sundays with links to the week’s posts. Subscribe by clicking this or at the blog.