The Moral Imperative to End Factory Farming: Thomas Quicksilver

By Stephen Erickson

Elementary school students peer out of school bus windows at the Duplin, North Carolina countryside. The woods are cut back from the road making room for crop fields, each spanning several acres. People’s homes glide past — modest brick houses, small clapboard ones little more than shacks, rectangular immobile mobile homes with built-on front porches. Puffy, low-hanging clouds drift across a heavy sky, wearing traces of pinks and oranges, gifts from the rising sun. No one pays any attention as they pass an unpaved road which cuts back through forest trees leading to a pig factory farm and its adjacent spray field…

Thomas Q. Piglet lives down this road. He’s a little guy with short white hair that doesn’t quite cover all of his soft pink skin. He’s got a really big head. And a long nose and pointy extendo ears. When he looks at you what may first strike you is his sharp, perceptive awareness, but right now his eyes are on the one who is most important in his young life — his mother.

She’s not sleeping, she’s not hurt, just confined inside the metal bars of a farrowing crate. She can stand up, but the dimensions of the crate are so narrow, the metal bars barely wider than the width of her body, that she can only step a foot or so forwards or back. She is unable to turn around. Thomas looks at her, nudges her snout and she looks back recognizing her piglet. She is having some difficulty breathing and looks tired — she isn’t well. She was brought here nearly three weeks ago when she was about to give birth. Thomas Q. is one of her ten babies in this cement and steel farrowing pen. She lies on her side to nurse them. Thomas and his brothers and sisters are confined in the narrow space beside her where you see him now.

Pigs like to bask and play in the sunlight as it warms their soft sensitive skin. When cool, scent-filled breezes envelope their faces and bodies, there’s nothing better. They quickly learn an array of sounds and gestures to communicate with each other. They form social groups. Pigs wag their tails when they are happy, and they learn to respond to their own names.1 They develop a strong memory for faces and will immediately recognize ones they like and others they’d prefer not to be around. Most of all, they love to root in muddy ground, to forage with their snouts amidst grass and bugs and all kinds of scents and mysteries in the wet soil. Mud keeps them cool as they don’t have many sweat glands. Pigs need to ingest the microbes and ‘dirt stuff’ to maintain their health.2 However, despite their penchant for rooting in the soil and running around in the fields, pigs are clean animals. They prefer to go to the bathroom well away from the areas where they eat, rest or anywhere near their farrowing pens.

Thomas hasn’t experienced any of that yet. He’s naturally curious but there’s nothing stimulating or interesting for him in this claustrophobic, fetid space. He and his mother, brothers and sisters live on this cold metal floor in this darkened room. The floor is grated, with lines of rectangular openings narrow enough so their feet don’t fall in, while wide enough for their urine and their poop to drop down into a collection space underneath before draining through pipes that lead outside into a vast adjacent cesspool called a lagoon.

As Thomas glances at his mom, she is not covered with dirt and bits of field grass and straw from a welcome journey outside — she hasn’t left this crate. Instead, she is covered in her own waste. His mother hasn’t stood up since yesterday. This concerns him but she’s alive and nurses him – so it must be okay. This is all he’s ever experienced, all he knows. This is how it’s supposed to be, right?

A human is approaching. Thomas is wary. When the humans appear, nothing good ever happens. Already in their young lives, Thomas and each of his brothers and sisters have been hurt by humans, receiving pain for reasons beyond their understanding. It’s best when the humans pass by leaving them alone. Pigs not only have very good memories, they are smart — most likely smarter than your dog, and maybe even as smart as cats although a cat would never admit that.

Thomas Q. would respond to human affection. Only he has never had that kind of experience. Fearful, he backs away from the workers as they approach. A week ago, a worker came into his pen, grabbed him by his hind legs and lifted him into the air. He squealed loudly, terrified and twisted his body but could not escape. The worker held a sharp scalpel in one hand and cut off his tail, which really hurt as he was given no anesthetic to kill the pain, then made two cuts in his backside, squeezed, drawing his young testicles out from inside his body and tore them off. As Thomas squealed loudly, writhing in searing pain, his mother went berserk. Roaring at the intruder, she pressed hard against the metal bars. Thomas was cast aside on the filthy floor. He watched helplessly as, one by one, each of his scurrying bothers were caught, raised and their squeals of terror turned into high pitched shrieks from the pain of tail docking and castration.

Today the human pays no attention to Thomas or his brothers and sisters, focusing instead on his mom. It matters to this worker that she’s not standing. It’s a nuisance. He carries a long metal rod, called a ‘poop stick,’ with which he prods her to get her to stand. The sows must stand at least once every day. Thomas watches as his mom is poked harder, harder still, again — until she rises. The worker then uses the stick to slide the masses of feces that have accumulated around her body into and through the openings in the floor. A mature sow, she weighs well over 400 pounds and produces around 16 pounds of excrement a day. The omnipresent, concentrated and highly toxic ammonia and hydrogen sulfide fumes from pig waste creates breathing problems for the pigs as well as a hazardous environment for the workers. Once the worker has finished, he moves along the row to the sow in the next gestation crate. Thomas hears the cries of other sows and piglets, their neighbors off in the darkened space of this vast room.

Later, in another building, Thomas will be assigned a number, which will be inked into his skin by half-inch long spikes mounted on a big hammer-like tool. He will be stuck with it and tattooed four times around his forward haunches. Sows are given a bright earring, more specifically an ear tag — like the yellow one you see his mother wearing — applied with a riveter. These pigs are not afforded even an instant of compassion; they’re barely considered animals. They are just production units on an assembly line. Thomas won’t be cared for, or even cared about. He is just kept alive and fed to maintain his value.

Thomas Q. isn’t even his name. He doesn’t have one. I named him. No one on this farm cares enough about him to give him one — nor ever will.

100 million pigs are raised for food each year in the United States. Today, 99% of these pigs spend their entire lives on factory farms in conditions similar to Thomas and his mother.3 The pork industry and its trade organizations like the American Association of Meat Processors and the North American Meat Institute promote the appearance of happy pigs living natural lives in idyllic pastures on small family farms to consumers, often using idealized images of these homesteads in their advertising and food packaging. They evoke a nostalgia for rural life, for this is what American family farms were like in the 1940s, 1950s and to a diminishing extent, the 1960s and 1970s. But for 99% of pigs today, this image couldn’t be further from their reality.

The industry refers to this as a farm, but it isn’t one in the traditional sense — it’s a factory. This is a factory farm, also referred to as a CAFO, which is an acronym for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. The tiny space Thomas, his mother, brothers and sisters occupy is just one in a long row of identical spaces extending over 200 feet, the entire length of this cavernous barn. Numerous identical rows of these gestation crates span the width of this farrowing outbuilding. 2,000 sows and piglets fill this darkened space.

On a traditional farm each animal is cared for, its needs are met, and it is afforded enough space to live according to its animal nature. The farmer’s living depends on raising thriving, healthy animals to full market weight and price. The pigs enjoy a good, fit, natural life. By contrast, raising livestock on a factory farm is just a numbers game. Animals here are considered a commodity, and the fact that they are living creatures rather than production units on an assembly line, is an inconvenience. If during the manufacturing process as Thomas Q. is grown to market size and weight, he is badly hurt or becomes diseased, then Thomas-Q. — the “production unit” — will be deemed broken, of no value, and will be cast aside. Dumpsters called ‘Dead Bins’ line the outside of this barn. One is waiting for him if that’s how it goes. Any care or attention paid to any of these production units beyond the barest minimum necessary to get them through the assembly process is an unnecessary expense to be avoided.

Today, noise and commotion command the pig’s attention. Something’s going on. Humans appear. Eight of them. The entirety of this huge factory farm and all of its barns is staffed by just ten workers. Thomas rarely sees more than one or two at any time, yet on this Friday, eight of them are entering. Suddenly, the back of Thomas’s pen opens, and a worker enters. He’s got the red paddle — the scariest color. It’s a wide, flat barrier Thomas Q. and his siblings can’t get around. The worker yells at them, shakes a plastic jug with frightening noisy things rattling in it. Thomas cowers beside his mother, tries to nudge himself under her for protection but to no avail. His mother has no energy to rise. She can’t shelter him.

The other door opens — the one on the other end of the pen. Mysteriously. No human blocks this path, this way out.

The Q in Thomas’s name stands for Quicksilver. He’s a fast little guy and he quickly realizes: this is his chance. Escape! This is the way!

Thomas Quicksilver is the first to dash out, leading his brothers and sisters into the middle aisle. Surprise! They are joined by piglets rushing out of the other pens on both sides, fleeing rattles and red paddles. Jailbreak! Piglets flood in. Thomas notices that the big doors at the far end are open. It’s darkness beyond — maybe a path out of this barn. The piglets herd together, head in that direction. Is it time now to see the sun? Is this the way to the grass and the rooting soil? The piglets are finally leaving this dark, scary, hurtful place, all they have ever known.

Thomas and hundreds of piglets move through the open doors and find themselves in another dark hallway. It leads to another. Thomas is cautious, wary, but has no choice but to keep advancing, pressed forward by those behind him. Another dark corridor, but this time, at its end… an open door with slices of brightness along its edges — the promise of sunlight beyond. Thomas and the other piglets head instinctively to the sunlight, which none of them have ever before experienced.

As they herd through this narrower door they emerge onto a metal ramp that leads them up into a transport truck. The sliver of sky above, vivid and warm, is eclipsed as the piglets behind Thomas force him forward into the truck.

Thomas is leaving the farrowing barn and will be driven to a grow-out barn where he will be housed in a small pen along with several other pigs. He will spend his remaining days there, until he approaches full size and market weight, at which time he will be transported to the rendering plant and to slaughter. Thomas will never set foot in a meadow or grassy farmland, never bask in the sun. He will never be able to root in wet mud or straw, never have space to run around and play with his friends. Or develop any of the complex social relationships pigs have the natural capacity for.

Back at the farrowing barn, it’s his mom’s turn. She, and all the sows have watched as their babies have been driven away. Now, it’s their turn to vacate this barn. The workers prepare a path to a different destination and this time they spread out, each manning turning points to direct traffic along the route. Just one sow is released at a time. The workers are prepared. They know from experience that sows will react in different ways.

The first sow released is one who has just delivered her first litter. First timers are excited to get out of their cramped crates. They haven’t been able to walk or even turn around for over three weeks. Now, the metal bars they have been pressing futilely against shift aside! These sows erupt into the middle aisle, discovering some space to move around. They follow the scent of the piglets, hoping to reunite with their own.

Once one sow hastens through the big doorway, and turns along the second section of the path, a worker lets out the next sow.

This sow is one who has been through this before. She leaves her crate stepping into the middle aisle but is more reluctant, lethargic. This is the second common reaction. Pigs, like dogs, can remember faces, bodies, and smells. They can quickly identify animals or people that they have encountered, even years before, remembering whether these experiences were good or bad. This sow has delivered several litters in this barn, she remembers this experience. She knows where she’s going, how it has ended before.

These sows are being transferred to the gestation barn, which is nearly as large as the farrowing barn, and where they will be forced into gestation crates barely wider than their bodies. These new crates are even smaller than the ones they are now leaving, as there is no additional space necessary for the nursing of piglets. They will each spend the next three months, three weeks and three days in those narrow confines, unable to walk, back up or turn around. 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days… Two thousand seven hundred and sixty-six hours. After about two weeks there, they are forcibly artificially inseminated and the whole cycle begins again.

For the first timers being moved, the end of this journey is an emotionally wrenching and often violent one. The workers know from experience that the very instant a first timer sow, so excited to be out of the torturous confines of a farrowing crate, turns the corner and faces the end of the path — not an open field, not an expansive enclosure, not even a modest size pen, or anything natural, of nature or even close — but a dark, tiny metal cage, smaller even than the one she just came from, that surprise, the total shock of this realization, quickly becomes angry rebellion. These large animals often turn and struggle to avoid going into this kind of space again — and must be forced. Two workers stand poised to use tools of personal preference — electric shockers, metal pipes, a length of rebar, whatever works best for them to gain compliance — to get each sow into the open gestation crate awaiting her.

Many experienced sows, those that have borne numerous litters, take this walk but must be prodded by the worker manning each new section of the route, in addition to being motivated at trail’s end to enter one of these narrow confinement cells.

For the workers, there are so few of them and so many animals. They are overworked, underpaid, and vastly overtasked. The hours are long, the job is dangerous, injuries are common. The workplace air they breathe is rife with dirt, fecal and other particulate matter, and disease. A quarter of them will develop respiratory problems such as asthma, bronchitis and organic toxic dust syndrome.4 Working at this factory farm, each one of them is now six times more likely to catch and carry the antibiotic-resistant MSRA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria which can cause deadly skin, blood and lung infections and is highly contagious.5 Their labor is considered unskilled so most are paid minimum wage, if that. Having to put up with, be complicit with and manage so much animal suffering, the job is soul deadening — a job very few people would want, one you take to survive, as an immigrant in a new land, as an unskilled, under-educated or underachieving person who’s strong of body, who has applied for work at manufacturing plants or businesses in town, and can find no other employment. The attitude requires a detached resignation to get the assigned tasks done each day while protecting what remains of your energy so that by shift’s end, you can clean up and head out into your private life, to the family you are providing for, to whatever pleasures or routine satisfaction you have some control over for the remainder of your living day.

Workers tend to get frustrated with the animals. Each day, there is only enough time to complete their assigned tasks if everything goes smoothly. To stay on schedule, they must get the animals to comply, even those incapable of it. When there’s a moment of brightness, when an animal’s sensitivity, feeling or intelligence shines through, it must be paid no attention to. Compassion does not exist here. Nothing can interfere with the factory farming process.

There was one morning when two workers entered the barn to discover two sows, along with their piglets, wandering loose along the middle aisle. The workers stopped and watched to try and figure out what exactly was happening. And what they saw amazed even them. One of the sows had figured out how to loosen her crate door hinges with her tongue, work a pin up, back and forth — again and again — until it fell open. She escaped with her babies. A second crate door, the one adjacent, lay on the ground as well. Rather than flee with her piglets through the far door and a chance at freedom, the sow had chosen to stay and free her neighbor. The workers watched in disbelief as she was now at a third gestation crate and, angling her snout from the outside in, was managing to lift and rock that door open as well. She succeeded, and the workers witnessed this third sow and her piglets emerge. The workers regarded one another, impressed with this animal’s intelligence, feeling an affinity with her selflessness in delaying her cherished escape to freedom to help others find theirs. They watched as she moved down the line and stopped at the next farrowing crate.

At this point the workers stopped her as they had no time to spare in their schedule for these escapees, let alone more. They remounted the crate doors, then returned the piglets to their pens, and the sows to their crates. All except one. The ringleader. Who now knew how to open a gestation crate door. She would not forget that, and she won’t stop doing it. So, she must be put down. And right there, right then, in front of her piglets, in front of all of them, she was.

The third most common type of animal reaction on this Friday is displayed by the sows that are absolutely unwilling, or due to injury, unable to be moved. Today, Thomas’s mother is one of them.

Thomas’s mother is four years old. Worn down and depleted from delivering and suckling three litters of piglets every year, living completely without exercise in this intensive confinement on cement and metal flooring, her leg muscles are weak and wasted away from lack of use, her swollen leg joints — increasingly painful even to put weight on — are now crippled. She finds herself unable to stand in her opened crate. She has an increasingly hard time breathing, having developed respiratory problems over years of inhaling the dust, dander and the poisonous gases released from the buildup of her urine and feces as well as what rises up from the accumulation space below from the waste of her 2,000 neighbors. Watching her babies taken from her, knowing from past experience that she will never see them again, companionless, comfortless, never once having succeeded in chewing through the bars of her crate despite having broken several of her teeth trying, prone now to dementia from the omnipresent stress and depression, she has withdrawn from this life as well.

A worker looks at her chart. She hasn’t eaten for three days.

Each hog’s food trough and water dispenser are checked daily. In yet another way the factory farming system cuts down on labor costs, the pig feed — stored in silos elevated outside each barn — is dispensed automatically through feeding pipes into individual rations into each sow’s trough. Due to the high risk of infectious disease in this exceedingly pestilent environment, the food delivered to the farm arrives laced with antibiotics. When a sow stops eating, it is recorded. On the third consecutive day a worker typically will then go to the refrigerator, get a syringe of tetracycline antibiotic, and inject the pig to knock back any infection she may have.

North Carolina hog farms are still reeling from the highly contagious PED (Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea) virus that appeared in the United States in May 2013, which spread rapidly throughout most of the country, killing or prompting the killing of over seven million pigs in the first year alone.

Thomas’s mother was given the shot yesterday. Today she is still not eating. And now she refuses all efforts to move her. She may have an infection. Or she may not. Terminally ill sows often are left to suffer for a week, even two, on the chance they might rebound. But Thomas’s mom is older and has had a productive life. The decision is made. She won’t be allowed back with the other hogs in the super-confined quarters of the gestation barn.

When a sow or a piglet must be terminated, workers have two options — the gas cart or “bolting.” The standard factory farm industry practice used for decades to kill injured pigs is “thumping.” You pick up a young pig by its hind legs, whip it high around and over your rotating body, and rocket it down, slamming its head with as much force as possible onto the concrete floor. You “thump” it off the floor. This practice may need to be repeated but when you get adept at it, the odds are good that you end the pig’s life on the first thump. “Thumping” is less common nowadays if the barn has a “death cart.”

One worker is wheeling this along the middle aisle now. Piglets that did not survive the move are tossed into its plastic tub, some alive, others dead. When the tub is full it is sealed and CO₂ gas is pumped into it, which, over ten slow minutes, should succeed in suffocating all the animals.

Grown sows like Thomas Quicksilver’s mother don’t fit into the tub.

A worker approaches her. He stands in front of her.

She looks up and regards him. He has a bolt gun in hand — it’s time for “bolting.” He raises it and presses it to her forehead. Her eyes watch him and, with a sudden excruciating shock, a steel bolt crushes through her skull and drives two inches into her brain. Senses, then consciousness leave her, and her suffering, miserable life finally, mercifully, ends.

. . .

So.

Why should we care? These are not animals living in the wild and they are not pets. Factory-farmed animals — pigs, cows, chickens, ducks and geese, fish, and animals raised for their fur — are brought into the world and raised to maturity for a specific purpose, either to produce something we consume such as meat, milk and eggs, or wear.

I, for one, care deeply. Subjecting another living creature to willful, deliberate sustained cruelty is never okay. Not one animal and certainly not hundreds of millions.

Awareness can be troubling, even painful. It can be excruciating to witness cruelty and suffering, let alone begin to realize how widespread it is. Awareness however, is a package deal. One which includes experiencing the beauty and interrelatedness of everything in this exquisite world — a world that each one of us has the unique and extraordinary opportunity to experience — during this lifetime in human form.

For the philosopher Joanna Macy, our ability to witness, to “suffer with,” lives at the very heart of compassion. As she writes so beautifully in World as Lover, World as Self, “In owning this pain, and daring to experience it, we learn that our capacity to ‘suffer with’ is the true meaning of compassion. We begin to know the immensity of our heart-mind, and how it helps us to move beyond fear. What had isolated us in private anguish now opens outward and delivers us into wider reaches of our world as lover, world as self.

“The truth of our inter-existence, made real to us by our pain for the world, helps us see with new eyes. It brings fresh understanding of who we are and how we are related to each other and the universe. We begin to comprehend our own power to change and heal. We strengthen by growing living connections with past and future generations, and our brother and sister species.”6

Compassion for animals, no less important than caring for one another, is one of the essential traits that defines and anchors our humanity. Our survival as a species depends on empathy for animals as well. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” We are not treating our farm animals well. The Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index7 ranks animal welfare performance of the world’s 50 largest livestock producing countries. The United States places second highest in animal cruelty. As a country, this is shameful.

In America today the vast majority8 of pigs, cows, chickens and turkeys endure lives of incessant stress and cruelty, crowded together in the horrific confines of factory farms. These are concentration camps for animals. And ideal breeding grounds for pandemic disease. You can help change this.

We can bring an end to factory farming. You can make a significant impact by no longer being their customer. In Eating Meat: Constants and Changes, Vaclav Smil determined that factory farming will no longer be necessary if Americans cut their meat demand by 30%.

Honor your body temple. Eat nutritious safe food to optimize your health and immune system. Especially during this Coronavirus pandemic. Eat less meat and dairy. Don’t purchase any food product containing meat and dairy from factory farms. You can source humanely raised pastured animals, free range chicken, grass-fed grass-finished beef, and organic produce on sites linked to this endnote.9

. . .

Thomas Q. Piglet is now full-grown Thomas Quicksilver. As you can see, he still has the pointy ears and an even bigger-than-big nose. He backs away from us, retreats as far as he can — although there’s not too much space in this crowded transport truck.

Every interaction Thomas has had with humans has been unfriendly, if not painful, so he remains fearful. To this day Thomas Quicksilver has never once been allowed to be outside and bask in the warming sunshine, to eat field grass and frolic in it, to wander into some muddy soil to root around and snoggle in. Once it was different, just for a moment — just that one time. The day when he was one of several hundred piglets on a transport truck destined for the farrowing barn. He was looking out through one of the metal openings at the sunshine and the grassy fields, breathing fresh air at last, realizing there exist spaces to run around in and play, to get out into this warm day and find some wet soil to wallow in. The transport slowed to a stop at a road crossing alongside a school bus. At each of its windows were children’s faces. Some of the girls started to coo, “oouughhh” and “aughh” and “Look how cute they are.” Boy’s heads turned as well. They smiled at Thomas — more than just how cute he is, they perceived his gentleness, his sensitivity, the intelligent curiosity in his gaze. Thomas had never before seen a human looking at him this way. He had never seen a human smile.

Thomas Quicksilver is unaware a date had been calendared for him — and that today that date has arrived. When his pen doors opened he seized the opportunity to dash out and find freedom and was steered onto and crowded into this animal transport truck.

He found the space to stand beside an opening in the metal side wall and he gazes out on the passing countryside, the green grass waving in the fields in a sunny breeze, tree leaves fluttering. Maybe, at long last, he’s going to be allowed to wander out there. He hasn’t lost hope.

Pigs are among the most intelligent animals, on a level with chimpanzees and dolphins.10 He would recognize his mother if they crossed paths. Maybe she will be wherever it is he is going.

All of us, we animals, want the same things: to be able to avoid pain and suffering, to eat and live in places where we can relax and feel safe.

At what point will Thomas lose hope? As the transport drives within a mile of the slaughterhouse, smells began to reach him. The wafting scent of pigs. Thousands of them are delivered to this final destination each day. But there is another smell as well. Pigs have an acute sense of smell. They smell better than we do, and they smell more.11 Thomas’s nose is bigger than most, but each of them takes it in: The smell of the smoke billowing out of the processing plant’s towering chimneys. Of pig body parts. It grows stronger — they realize that this place is getting closer. Thomas senses that this is not a safe place, it is not a good place.

That concern is what you see in Thomas’s eyes now as the transport has stopped outside its destination.

The transport pulls into the yard; journey’s end. As Thomas is forced out of the truck and herded toward an entry, he hears high pitched shrieks of terror — of panicked pigs within.

At what point will hope leave him? Thomas has lived so much of his life in fear. Does fear ebb as hope drains away? He is forced into the building, shoulder to shoulder with his companions. He has grown to maturity with them yet never had any opportunity to form social groups with any of them. As the sunlight leaves him and he advances into shadow, the screams are more acute, bone-chilling. Nothing is worse than the sound of the terror ahead, indoors, reverberating off machine metal and cement walls. The dominant smell now is fresh blood and entrails — and it’s the smell of his kind.

Thomas Quicksilver, fleet of foot, glances around. He’s done it before, he’s spotted that door ajar, that escape path, that opportunity to dash to a safer better place, a kinder place, a sunlit place, to freedom. He’s seen children’s smiles, their adoring faces, he’s just seen sunlit fields. Unlike his mother, he’s still able of body. His heart beats rapidly but is heavy in this horrific place, a Hell on Earth. His soul is wounded — but he can still scurry. He hasn’t lost hope. He’ll find an open door, a sliver of a crack, a way out. He will find it. Here and now or here and hereafter.

. . .

Thomas Quicksilver, we cannot save you, we cannot comfort you in the slightest, we cannot improve your life. We cannot even communicate to you one thing that we really wish we could: That many of us, and many more of us with each new day, are aware of what factory farming is, and we are acting with our purchasing power, deciding that whatever we choose to eat, it will no longer include the products of factory farms. We will no longer sustain and enable this cruelty. We will no longer be complicit in allowing this shameful abomination to continue.

In the early Latin translations of the Bible, the word “dominion” was used declaring that God gave humans “dominion” over animals. Given Christianity’s message of love and mercy, theologians are now interpreting that verse using the word “stewardship” instead, finding that more harmonious with passages appearing elsewhere in the Bible. Teachings like, “Blessed are the merciful,” and “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto Me.” Like our pets, these animals are sentient beings. Because we are aware of the horror endured on factory farms, and because we can effect change, we cannot turn a blind eye.

The Golden Rule is part of our journey. You know the one — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” More than how we treat other human beings, it applies to how we treat animals, and our entire world. For Thomas Quicksilver, for each one of us, it’s all about the Golden Rule…

We take responsibility. We are at a pivotal point in human history. Humanity surviving not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but our climate emergency as well, is based on widespread awareness, seizing this moment, and taking action. The choice we have is a moral choice — one which defines who we are. It’s based fundamentally, on our compassion.

Thomas Quicksilver, we are raising our voices and taking action to end the horror of factory farms so that future generations of animals will not suffer as you and your mother have.

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Stephen Erickson is an author and a dedicated environmental and animal activist for 30 years.

He is also a screenwriter, feature filmmaker, and former Home Entertainment executive. He lives in Los Angeles and has 3 children.

In The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World Stephen identifies our Arch-Villain, the main cause of global warming which now threatens human extinction this century.

He also explores our singular solution.

Along the way there are exquisite creatures like Thomas Quicksilver, human and non-human. The challenges they face reveal the immensity of the threat facing each one of us — and its urgency.

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1 Rob Percival, Why Animal Sentience Matters – and Why We Need a Charter for Animal Compassion, AlterNet, Aug. 11, 2017 https://www.alternet.org/animal-rights/why-animal-sentience-matters-and-why-we-need-charter-animal-compassion

2 Dr. Meg Cattell and Dr. Arden Nelson told me that “Pigs are made to live half underground. They need all those microbes and dirt stuff in their gut. When we take pigs into a sterile environment it messes them up. Most pigs that die prematurely die from ingestive disorders.” Drs. Meg Cattell and Arden Nelson are board certified dairy veterinarians and proponents of grass feeding and keeping animals healthy through nutrition and management. As consulting veterinarians and educators they have worked with many sizes and types of dairies throughout the United States and have lectured around the world. http://windsordairy.com/learning-center.html

3 ASPCA American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals website https://www.aspca.org/animal-cruelty/farm-animal-welfare/animals-factory-farms

4 Farm Sanctuary, Factory Farming’s Effect on Rural Communities, Farm Sanctuary website, https://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/factory-farmings-effect-on-rural-communities/

5 Shylo E. Wardyn, Brett M. Forhey, Sarah A. Farina, et al. Swine Farming is a Risk Factor for Infection With and High Prevalence of Carriage of Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, Center For Emerging Infectious Diseases, Jul. 2015, CID 2015:61 (1 July), https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/838e/424b2ded981288fd6e7e28e1633cfa1b3cab.pdf

6 Reprinted from World As Lover, World As Self (1991, 2007) by Joanna Macy with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org

7 https://vaci.voiceless.org.au/

8 https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates

9 https://www.thegreathealing.org/blog/source-humanely-raised-pastured-animals-free-range-chicken-grass-fed-grass-finished-beef-on-these-sites

10 Reynard Loki, How Can You Talk to Kids About Factory Farming? These Books Can Help., Truthout, Oct. 28, 2018, https://truthout.org/articles/how-can-you-talk-to-kids-about-factory-farming-these-books-can-help/

11 Reynard Loki, How Can You Talk to Kids About Factory Farming? These Books Can Help., Truthout, Oct. 28, 2018, https://truthout.org/articles/how-can-you-talk-to-kids-about-factory-farming-these-books-can-help/