SOUL FOOD:

There are people who argue with me that the treatment of animals has nothing to do with religion. But I’ve known better since I was what my mother calls knee-high to a gnat’s heel.

Along with how to say grace before meals and my prayers before bed, she and my father taught me that animals deserve compassion akin to what we afford to people. Not that, as my father would explain, you jump in to save a drowning dog before you save its owner.

But it was clear I was never to be deliberately cruel to any cognizant, living creature. St. Francis of Assisi, who called the sun brother and the moon sister, had a place in my childhood home as sure as any family member.

Were you to visit my mother today, a three-foot statue of St. Francis would greet you at the door.

With an outstretched hand, he extends a bowl of fresh water to the birds, the snails and the ants. Inside the house, you will find him in nearly every room in other iconic forms.

The Brownie Girl Scouts is the first organization I ever belonged to. But the second was an animal care group sponsored by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and I remained a member of it far longer.

In November, I wrote in this column about the efforts of the Humane Society of the United States and Californians for Humane Farms to get The California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act on the November 2008 ballot. The act doesn’t ask wild and crazy things.

It asks that gestation crates for pigs, battery cages for hens and veal crates for male calves be outlawed. This assures that farm animals can lie down, stand up, turn around and fully extend its limbs.

You can read the proposed act in full at www.ag.ca.gov/cms_ pdfs/initiatives/2007- 08-09_07-0041_Initiative.pdf.

More information on humane animal farming is available at the website for Californians for Humane Farms: www.humanecalifornia.org.

In California, the act has been widely endorsed by animal protection organizations and humane societies. It has also gained significant support from veterinarians and from a handful of farmers.

Yet in spite of the relatively new HSUS Animals and Religion program, religious leaders and religious communities have been slow to champion this cause.

A small and slowly growing number in California have lent their formal support.

They now include the Right Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California; Bishop Beverly J. Shamana, the California Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church; Bishop Mary Ann Swenson of the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church; and the Right Rev. James R. Mathes, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego.

Given the thumbs-up of these Episcopal and Methodist bishops, I expected to find local support in the United Methodist and Episcopal churches here in Huntington Beach. But I was disappointed.

I especially thought I would find active support at St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church. St. Wilfrid has long had a vital and savvy Earth Ministry.

On March 1, Andi and Jamie Douglass, who head up that ministry, will conduct a workshop for the Los Angeles Diocese to teach other parishes how to develop similar creation care ministries. So I was surprised when I phoned Douglass and discovered he had not heard of The California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.

For the initiative to make it to the November ballot 650,000 signatures must be collected. An e-mail from Farm Sanctuary’s Angela Barker on Valentine’s Day told me 90,000 signatures were still needed. Now, the deadline to collect them is Friday. And even if you are inclined to provide one of those signatures, finding a petition to sign your name to may be tough to do.

The only place I have encountered someone in Orange County collecting signatures was at a Valentine’s Day fundraiser for the Animal Assistance League that is in Midway City. I wish I knew why.

When I wrote on this initiative in November, I noted an article in the Los Angeles Times that indicated that 58% of 600 people who had recently eaten out ranked animal welfare third among their top five social concerns. Animal welfare took a back sent only to health insurance and a living wage.

In the same story, Paul Shapiro, senior director for the HSUS Factory Farming Campaign, described the nation’s commitment to animal welfare as having reached “a tipping point.” I’m still hoping and praying he is right.

If the recent Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. debacle is any indication, it seems that on this issue the nation still has one foot on the boat and the other on the dock.

The abuse at the slaughterhouse, documented in an undercover video since broadcast by many online sources including AOL, goes far beyond the cruelty of gestation crates and battery cages.

As a nation, we still seem to define cruelty to companion animals and cruelty to farm animals very differently. We may send Michael Vick to prison for what he did to dogs but we’ll still feign to hear no evil and see no evil when it comes to the misery of pigs, horses, cows and fowl.

Had the treachery at Westland/Hallmark not also posed a health danger to humans, I’m not sure it would have garnered the attention outside animals rights groups that it has.

Whether or not The California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act makes it to the ballot in November, it’s time we hear pleas of Wayne Parcelle, chief executive of the Human Society — especially those of us in faith communities with scriptural imperatives to care for animals.

Parcelle has asked people of faith to educate themselves about the treatment of animals raised for food and to square their consumption habits with their religion principles. He has asked them to advocate for better farm animal welfare policies.

In a nation that Business Week says now spends $41 billion each year on pets, it’s time to close the divide between companion and farm animal welfare.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].