One Eye Squinted

Why evangelicals should oppose the new farm bill's Save Our Bacon Act

(RNS) — Evangelicals have largely forgotten past generations of evangelicals who not only fought against the slave trade and inhumane working conditions but also against animal cruelty.

(Photo by Mark Stebnicki/Pexels/Creative Commons)

Karen Swallow Prior
June 4, 2026 

RNS


(RNS) — Christians should care about cruelty to animals, even, perhaps especially, the animals we eat.

The Bible is filled with principles that govern the ways in which animals are to be cared for, slaughtered, eaten and sacrificed. Laws and regulations in our own government today that eliminate or reduce unnecessarily cruel and inhumane conditions for animals simply reflect biblical wisdom regarding the good stewardship of God’s creation.

Christians should know, then, that the 2026 Farm Bill, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in April and is expected to go before the Senate this month, departs from this biblical wisdom. The bill contains a provision, referred to as the Save Our Bacon Act, directed at overriding some state laws against animal cruelty. The act specifically targets legislation in California and Massachusetts (passed by voter approval) requiring “that hogs, calves and chickens that are on confined farms or sold in the states are raised with adequate room to turn around, lie down and extend their limbs.”

To be very clear: The proposed change will nullify the basic requirement that living, breathing, sentient creatures created by God have room to move and rest throughout the short duration of their lives. Requiring such minimum comfort “hardly seems an unreasonable request for a modern, enlightened society,” as Kathleen Parker recently mused. Indeed, such cruelty directly counters Scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments that command us not to muzzle an ox while it is threshing.

As some critics point out, the provision not only removes animal welfare protections, but will also hurt small-scale farmers. Moreover, a report from Harvard Law School finds that the act could have unintended effects on hundreds of local and state laws and regulations “related to livestock production and livestock products that are intended to protect public health, farmers, and consumers, such as vaccination and food safety requirements.”

Ultimately, while it may feel impossible to untangle all the layers of competing needs and interests entailed in the bill, Christians have an ethical, God-ordained duty to care well for all of creation by supporting practices that are humane and healthy for both people and animals. Opposing cruelty is foundational to any system of Christian ethics, but it is also essential to our mere humanity.

William Wilberforce would be scandalized by the pro-factory farming EATS Act

William Hogarth’s “The First Stage of Cruelty: Children Torturing Animals,” left, and “The Second Stage of Cruelty: Coachman Beating a Fallen Horse.” (Images courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

This is not a new idea, of course, but it is one that gained new currency in the early modern period when urbanization and industrialization severed old ties between humans and the natural world. It was in the midst of this great shift that the English painter William Hogarth produced a series of prints titled “The Four Stages of Cruelty“ (1751), which vividly portrays the natural course of cruelty for the one who practices it.

The series depicts a character, aptly named Tom Nero, over the course of a life characterized by acts of heartless cruelty — first acts committed by him, but ultimately upon him. The first print shows Tom sadistically torturing a dog on a city street with another boy while others commit abuses on other animals nearby. Only one boy seems to be pleading for them to stop.

The second print depicts Tom grown and working as a coachman. His horse has collapsed from exhaustion, and Tom is wielding the stick with which he has mercilessly beaten the horse, surrounded by other men heaping abuses on other creatures on the city street.

In the third print, we see Tom in the moments after he has murdered his pregnant lover, details of the event described in a letter written by his lover, included in the scene. Tom’s pockets are full of stolen goods and weaponry.


William Hogarth’s “The Third Stage of Cruelty: Cruelty in Perfection,” left, and “The Fourth Stage of Cruelty: The Reward of Cruelty.” (Images courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

The fourth and final in the series conveys the moral lesson with the inevitable consequences for such a life: Tom has been executed by hanging, his body is being dissected by heartless operators and bears signs and symbols that reflect all the cruelties he has committed over the course of his life.

Hogarth’s series brings starkly to life the truth that cruelty begets cruelty and ultimately consumes the one who is cruel. This is a truth that was embraced by the earliest evangelical reformers, whose broad reforms during the 18th and 19th centuries changed the world in ways we take for granted today.

Hogarth’s work was produced during the decades when evangelicalism was growing as a movement in England and the Colonies. Within a few decades of this series, a generation of evangelical leaders would rise up who would see with new eyes the various forms of cruelty that were all around in everyday life and challenge them: slavery, the inhumane working conditions of the poor, the injustice of the system of criminal law and animal cruelty.

These evangelicals — including John Newton, William Wilberforce and Hannah More — successfully advocated for reforms in all of these areas. While they were fighting to abolish the slave trade — fueled by the virtue of benevolence and in recognition of the demoralizing and coarsening effects all forms of cruelty have on all those who participate in it — these evangelicals also advocated for animal welfare. In fact, in 1824 Wilberforce helped found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This is a legacy that, sadly, has been largely forgotten by evangelicals today. But it is a legacy worth remembering and keeping today.

Industrialization and bureaucracy bring greater distances between us and the animals we eat, and it’s easy to feel removed from the practices by which living, breathing, sentient animals become the products we consume — because we are so greatly removed.

But that distance does not remove our ethical and moral responsibility to fulfill the stewardship mandate God gave us in a way that reflects the nature of his goodness and care. It is good and right to care well for the lives of the creatures who aid and sustain human life.

RELATED: Animal cruelty officer-turned-animal chaplain Matty Giuliano loves ferrets and St. Francis

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Dog training choices reflect owners’ ethical views on animals

University of Copenhagen

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Whether a dog owner rewards their dog with a treat or corrects it by pulling on the leash is not simply a matter of what they believe to be the most effective training method. According to the study, owners’ choice of training methods is linked to their ethical stance on how animals should be treated and used. The results come from a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Edinburgh.

Dog owners with an animal welfare-oriented ethical stance are less likely to use punishment-based training methods than those who believe that animals are there for humans to use.

“If you use punishment as part of dog training, you are more likely to view dogs as existing primarily for human purposes. If you use less punishment and rely more on positive training methods, you are more likely to orient yourself towards the idea that animals should have rights, or at least good welfare,” says Peter Sandøe, Professor at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Copenhagen and senior author of the study.

Treats versus verbal correction

The study is based on responses from 500 dog owners in the United States, who were surveyed about their training practices.

Positive training methods – such as treats, toys and verbal praise – were widely used among respondents, while punishment-based methods, including verbal reprimands or physical correction, were used less frequently.

The participants were also asked about their views on animals and were categorized based on their responses. Overall, respondents reflected three main types of ethical orientation towards animals: an anthropocentric orientation, an animal welfare-oriented ethics stance and an animal rights orientation.

The results show that dog owners with an anthropocentric animal‑ethical stance are more likely to use punishment‑based methods than owners who believe that animals are entitled to good welfare or rights. In addition, owners who believe that animals are entitled to good welfare were more likely to use positive methods than owners with an anthropocentric stance.

Training choices are not based on effectiveness alone

According to Peter Sandøe, the study indicates that choice of dog training methods does not solely reflect technical knowledge or understanding of learning theory.

“Training is not a neutral activity. It is an activity in which the owner’s view of the animal becomes apparent. The methods people choose also reflect their beliefs about what our moral obligations towards animals are.”

From this perspective, influencing choice of training methods is not merely a technical or professional issue.

“It is not only about learning theory – it is also an ethical discussion. You cannot isolate it as something purely technical or sciency, as some tend to do,” says Peter Sandøe.

More reflective choices for dog owners

Although the study was conducted in the United States, similar patterns may be expected in other countries, explains Peter Sandøe. While the distribution of ethical views may vary across countries, the relationship between ethical orientation and the choice of training methods is likely to be comparable.

At the same time, the findings may encourage reflection among dog owners.

“The study creates room for reflection. Ethics appears to play an important role in why people do what they do when training their dogs,” says Peter Sandøe.

Overall, the study highlights considerable variation in how people relate to animals.

“People have very different views on animals, and dog training is an area that really divides opinions,” concludes Peter Sandøe.

 

[[ BOX 1: About the study

The study is based on responses from 500 dog owners in the United States who completed a questionnaire. Participants reported how often they used different training methods and were then asked to respond to a series of statements about animal ethics.

The study is not representative, and the results cannot therefore be used to estimate how widespread different training methods or ethical orientations are in the general population. The study focuses solely on the relationship between training choices and ethical orientation.

The study used a measure of animal ethical orientation developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. This measure has also been applied in previous studies examining the relationship between animal ethics views and consumer choices, such as the purchase of pork with or without animal welfare labels.

The data collection was carried out by Tracy Weber from the University of Edinburgh.

The study also involved contributions from Kevin McPeake from the University of Edinburgh, Thomas Bøker Lund from the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen, and Björn Forkman and Iben Meyer from the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.

Link to the study: Full article: Dog Owners’ Use of Training Methods and Their Ethical Stance on the Treatment of Animals ]]

 

[[ BOX 2: Three types of ethical orientation towards animals

The study categorized respondents according to their ethical orientation towards animals. Overall, three main orientations were identified:

1. Anthropocentric orientation – the view that it is ethically acceptable for humans to use animals for human purposes
2. Animal protection orientation – the view that humans may use animals, but have an obligation to ensure good animal welfare
3. Animal rights orientation – the view that animals have moral value comparable to humans and should be entitled to similar rights

Dog owners with an anthropocentric orientation were more likely to use verbal reprimands or physical correction as part of their dog training than owners with one of the two other animal-ethical orientations. At the same time, owners with a welfare‑oriented view used more positive methods – such as treats, toys, and praise – than the anthropocentric owners. ]]

 

[[ BOX 3: Positive and punishment-based training methods

Most respondents reported using positive training methods, consistent with what the study refers to as positive reinforcement training.

• 97 percent reported using praise
• 86 percent reported using treats or toys as rewards

Punishment-based methods were used less frequently:

• 46 percent reported using some form of punishment
• 25 percent reported using physically aversive methods, such as pulling on the leash or similar forms of physical correction

Only a small proportion of respondents – just under 18 percent – reported relying exclusively on reward-based training methods. ]]

---

Journal

Anthrozoös

Article Title

Dog Owners’ Use of Training Methods and Their Ethical Stance on the Treatment of Animals

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Perspectives on Base, Superstructure and Animal Liberation

Jon Hochschartner

 May 7, 2026

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Photo by Annie Spratt

For some years, I’ve been interested in the Marxist concepts of base and superstructure —  specifically what they suggest is necessary to achieve animal liberation, and, as a result, where animal activists should be focusing their efforts. I’ve come to believe protein alternatives that are identical in taste and cheaper to produce than slaughtered meat are likely a precondition of widespread animal liberation. Consequently, my activism has been focused on securing public funding for cultivated-meat research.

For those who don’t know, the new protein is grown from livestock cells, without slaughter. The technology exists to create cultivated meat, but, for now, it’s too expensive to mass produce. My hope is that as the base of society changes, as cellular agriculture becomes more efficient than incumbent practices, the superstructure will change as well, allowing broader swathes of the population to accept the ethical case against nonhuman exploitation.

Still, I’m not an academic and a lot of theoretical discussion is over my head. I was curious how others interpreted the ideas of base and superstructure in the context of animal liberation. So I set out to interview various relevant thinkers on the subject. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who took the time to answer my questions. While I don’t agree with all of the arguments made here, I hope the different perspectives will spark further discussion of what I believe to be an important topic.

Marco Maurizi has taught Philosophy and History at the Lombardo Radice Institute and has held seminars in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. His research develops a materialist critique of nature, focusing on the historical and social conditions of domination and the human–animal relationship. His book Beyond Nature: Animal Liberation, Marxism, and Critical Theory has contributed to the international debate on Marxism and anti-speciesism, and his works have been translated into several languages.

“If we take the base/superstructure relation seriously, then animal exploitation cannot be understood primarily as an ethical failure or a cultural residue, but as structurally embedded in the mode of production,” Maurizi said. “The use of animals is not an accidental feature of capitalism (or pre-capitalist class societies), but part of the material organization of labor, food systems, and value extraction. This has two main consequences.”

First, Maurizi didn’t believe animal liberation could be achieved by ethical argument or individual consumer choices alone. He thought these might have some impact, but this would always be limited so long as the economic base remained the same. Despite minor and precarious cultural shifts, animals would continue to be exploited, because conditions of the system required it.

“Second, strategy must therefore prioritize interventions at the level of the material organization of production,” Maurizi said. “This does not mean waiting for a total systemic rupture, but it does mean orienting struggles toward transforming the economic structures that sustain animal exploitation. For example, this implies confronting industrial agriculture as a system of labor exploitation and ecological destruction, linking animal liberation to struggles over land use, food systems, and workers’ control, and challenging the commodification of living beings as such.”

Therefore, he argued animal liberation should be seen as part of a wider socialist transformation, not as a movement disconnected from others. Otherwise, Maurizi thought animal activists risked engaging in ‘ethical idealism,’ which would allow the base of society to remain unchanged and accomplish little.

“At the same time, the base/superstructure relation should not be read in a mechanically deterministic way,” he said. “Superstructural struggles (ideological, cultural, legal) can play a real role in destabilizing the existing order, especially when they articulate contradictions already present in the base, for instance the ecological unsustainability of animal agriculture. The key is that these struggles become effective when they connect to material conflicts, rather than remaining purely discursive.”

Maurizi argued animal activists should deprioritize consumer-focused strategies and ethical argument. Rather, in his view, animal activists should ally with the labor and environmental movements and focus more on the economic supports of nonhuman exploitation, like subsidies and supply chains.

“More generally, let me add that the distinction between base and superstructure remains important insofar as it helps to move the discussion beyond the ethical abstraction typical of bourgeois movementism and the empirical immediacy of certain anarchist tendencies; however, once this theoretical impasse is overcome, it should itself be problematized,” Maurizi said. “The later Marx no longer relies on these early conceptual pairs in the same way, but rather attempts to reformulate social analysis in terms of totality/universalism vs. parts/particularism, and materialism vs. idealism. At present, however, the level of debate on these questions remains too underdeveloped for this shift to be widely operative.”

Emilia A. Leese is an author, re-wilder, and podcast host exploring the intersections of ethics, food, and our relationship with the natural world. After a 20-year career as a corporate finance lawyer, she now channels her strategic insight into vegan advocacy and ecological restoration, the latter with the award-winning BirchfieldHighlands.org. Leese is co-author of Think Like a Vegan: Embracing Ethics in a Plant-Powered World and hosts a podcast of the same name.

“If you take the base (economic structures like capitalism) as largely determining the superstructure (laws, culture, and ideology), then achieving animal liberation requires first dismantling the capitalist base commodifying animals for profit,” Leese said. “Consequently, animal activists should prioritize anti-capitalist strategies, such as building a broad, class-conscious anti-speciesist vegan movement challenging animal agriculture as a core pillar of the economic system… This means integrating anti-speciesist veganism into a revolutionary ecological framework, treating animal liberation not as a separate moral issue, but as essential to any genuine struggle against capitalist exploitation.”

John Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches courses in ethics, political theory, existentialism, and other topics. He is the author of The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves. Sanbonmatsu is creator and curator of the CleanMeat-Hoax.com website, which raises concerns about cultivated meat technology. His writing has appeared in Christian Science Monitor, CounterPunch, Huffington Post, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among other places.

“Capitalism is not just a system for producing material stuff, it is a total way of producing life,” Sanbonmatsu said. “As such, the ideas, practices, and beliefs we find dominant in society are in some way given to us by the economic system. Because the latter is organized exclusively around the production of commodities for private profit, we find that cultural beliefs and norms, worldviews, philosophies, religions, and so so, mirror the economic ‘base’ or substructure. We thus grow up with the idea that capitalism is the best system, that free markets lead to free ideas, that anyone can become rich if they set their mind to it, that the state (government) is a ‘neutral’ or disinterested umpire (rather than an institution that serves the wealthy class), and so on. Not to understand this fundamental relation between the production system and our beliefs and values is not to understand society. And without a proper understanding of society, one cannot hope to change it.”

Unfortunately, he believed most animal activists don’t understand how speciesism is reinforced by capitalism. Under the current economic system, animals become commodities or raw materials of commodities. Further, Sanbonmatsu argued, animal activists tell themselves stories about animal liberation which are influenced by capitalist mythology. He cited common activist beliefs, such as how individual diet change or private philanthropy can achieve nonhuman freedom, to support his view.

“There is no prospect whatsoever that animals can be liberated under a system of general degradation, exploitation and cruelty in which most of the human race is itself enslaved to a system of forced, meaningless, and ecologically destructive labor; in which nature is commodified and destroyed; and in which every incentive for changing our values and way of life run the wrong way,” Sanbonmatsu said. “Animal liberation therefore implies the abolition of capitalism as a mode of production, just as an ethical form of democratic socialism necessarily implies animal justice.”

Vasile Stănescu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Mercer University. He is the co-founder of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS) and previously served as co-senior editor of the Critical Animal Studies book series published by Brill/Rodopi. More information about his research and podcast is available at winforanimals.org.

“I take base and superstructure seriously, but not as a simple one-way model,” Stănescu said. “The economic base matters enormously; animal advocates should focus far more on ending the material supports that keep meat artificially cheap. But the superstructure matters as well, because those material arrangements only work when meat already carries cultural meaning as a sign of prosperity, status, and a proper standard of living.”

For example, he asked, what was the problem factory farming was invented to solve? Stănescu believed part of answer was that it was used to ‘buy off’ the proletariat with low-cost meat. Workers received this instead of the higher wages their unions were demanding.

“But here is the interesting part: the idea that meat, as a symbol, represents wealth itself operates at the level of the superstructure,” Stănescu said. “In other words, the only reason the base strategy of making meat cheaper worked as a way of buying off the working class was because of a superstructural idea: meat itself signified wealth. The material strategy only worked because the symbol already had power.”

Troy Vettese is an environmental historian and post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the co-author of Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics. Vettese’s writing has appeared in Jacobin, Bookforum, n+1, the Guardian and Boston Review.

“I think one should ask why is capitalist society so carnivorous?” He said. “If we think through rather basic processes of mechanization, it becomes clear that certain foods offer more opportunities for relative surplus value creation, namely factory farmed meat and grains, hence the strange capitalist diet of meat and processed carbohydrates. What people should be eating, organic legumes, vegetables, et cetera that are grown nearby, offer fewer opportunities for mechanization, hence capital is stuck relying largely on labour rather than fixed capital.”

To counter capital’s carnivorous tendencies, Vettese argued vegan food needed to be subsidized at scale. He believed animal activists should support meat-packing unions and anti-trust measures as part of an effort to limit capital’s drive to mechanize production further by deskilling labor and achieving economies of scale.

Katherine Perlo, PhD, is the author of Kinship and Killing: The Animal in World Religions and various journal articles, the most recent being ‘What is the animal class?’ in Politics and Animals. She is a long-standing vegan and animal-rights campaigner. Perlo went university late in life to study philosophy. Originally trained as musician, she worked as piano accompanist, private piano teacher, typist, typesetter, and proofreader. Perlo still gives private piano lessons.

“Early humans, and today some humans in harsh climates, had to, or thought they had to, kill animals,” she said. “This generated a whole mythical/religious/moralistic/social superstructure applied back onto the base, in such matters as, for example, rebirth (still attributed to slaughtered animals in Tibet’s harsh climate), divine dominionism, and the place of women. And having got used to killing animals out of necessity, humans went on to do so by agriculture, as it was easier. The process might be summed up as: humans killed animals out of actual or apparent need (base), and then they made excuses for it (superstructure).“

Perlo believed this ideological subterfuge was necessary because humans felt guilty about their exploitation of animals. She suggested activists should focus on addressing the moral superstructure, by highlighting our common sentience with animals, and not being intimidated by accusations of sentimentally or anthropomorphism. Perlo likened God to a spin doctor of human supremacy and argued in favor of adopting a sort of interspecies Golden Rule.

“As fellow sentient beings, [animals] merit every consideration that we in theory give to fellow humans,” she said. “All our superstructural morality, Western and Eastern alike, rests on the altruism derived from common sentience — but until recently, only from that shared with fellow humans, with the help of the spin-doctor in the superstructure. Time for him to step down onto the base, recognize common sentience as the source of all morality, and join campaigners in urging the public to ‘go vegan.’”

Renzo Llorente teaches philosophy at Saint Louis University-Madrid. He is the author of The Political Theory of Che Guevara and Beyond the Pale: Exercises in Provocation, as well as many articles in political philosophy, ethics and Latin American philosophy. He is also the translator and editor of The Marxism of Manuel Sacristán: From Communism to the New Social Movements. His new book, The Political Thought of Fidel Castro, will be published soon.

“Is animal liberation possible within capitalism, that is to say, within a system based on capitalist relations of production?” Llorente asked. “I would argue that the answer to this question is ‘no,’ in part because I believe that true, or complete, animal liberation requires true, or complete, human emancipation: just as capitalism disfigures and vitiates humans’ relationships with their fellow humans, so, too, it disfigures and vitiates their relationships with non-human animals.”

In the long term, he argued, animal activists should seek to achieve social control of the means of production, which would allow nonhuman-exploitation industries to be radically transformed. With the removal of an individual profit motive, Llorente believed at least one reason to use animals would disappear as well. Further, he suggested the liberation of human beings from capitalism would change us, perhaps leading to a new relationship with our fellow creatures.

“As for the short term, or as regards more immediate objectives, animal-rights activists should focus on superstructural questions — our moral and religious ideas regarding animals, as well as the laws and political beliefs that govern our treatment of them,” Llorente said. “This proposal will only seem inconsistent with a Marxist approach to social transformation if we forget that, as Engels reminds us in some well-known remarks, the superstructure can ‘react back’ upon — i.e., shape the development of — the forces and relations of production. In short, changes in people’s moral and religious ideas, and the laws that apply to our treatment of animals, may lead to changes in the uses and development of the forces of production (and, thereby, to changes in the relations of production).”

Jon Hochschartner is the author of a number of books about animal-rights history, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, Ingrid Newkirk, and Puppy Killer, Leave Town. He blogs at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com

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