Editor,

Are you starving your soul by not being compassionate, just and humane? It’s an uncomfortable question for many of us.

If we are unable or unwilling to empathize with animals, to see clearly that they have souls, what you’re putting on your plate is probably not soul food, no matter what culinary tradition it harkens back to. Assuming animals are simply products is normalizing cruelty and ignoring the atrocities that happen every hour of every day on factory farms. If we abandon justice for animals we accustom ourselves to cruelty, and the dissonance between pretending to be compassionate, just, and humane, and supporting factory farming is cognitively debilitating, and erodes the soul like hubris and oppression and denial. Justifying cruelty and suffering is corrosive to the soul.

Having the courage to disobey a cultural dietary mandate that pretends animals are not sentient is redemptive. Being just and compassionate and humane to animals is redemptive. Overlooking injustice to animals starves the soul. Real soul food comes from a garden, not a factory.

Verrall Hoover

Langley