THE author David Grumett is both a senior lecturer in theology and ethics at the University of Edinburgh and has also advised governments on animal welfare. This book is aimed specifically at the treatment of farm animals that are bred for their meat or by-products and highlights the care of such animals in biblical times and in modern farming.

The book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter looks at animals in their natural groups and how they interact and exhibit characteristic behaviour. The second chapter looks at animal bodies and how they are used in procreation, protection, feeding, and grooming, and considers how intentional breeding can promote or hinder animal welfare. The third chapter looks at animal behaviour, including the importance of roaming, eating, play, and, in some species, developed navigational abilities. The fourth chapter is concerned with those who have direct care of farmed animals and who are decisive for welfare, for which the animal-human relationship is as important today as it was in biblical times.

The Bible shows us that animals were valued in their own right and not simply with regard to their usefulness to humans. In a community in which humans and farmed animals lived closely together, the human desire for food required having both healthy animals and good husbandry.

The book’s impressive bibliography shows the extensive scientific research that has examined animal behaviour and welfare, and the challenges faced by an increasingly hungry world that demands cheap food from animals that are often intensively farmed and unseen, apart from on supermarket shelves. Economic and legislative pressures, climate change, population growth and culture all affect the welfare of animals.

Acknowledging the symbiotic relationship that exists between farm animals and humans and the biblical and theological implications of such a relationship, the author ends by asking what can be done to improve farm-animal welfare. He concludes, “Today this can be done by applying biblical principles informed by modern animal welfare science.”

The Rt Revd Dominic Walker OGS is a former Bishop of Monmouth.

The Bible and Farm Animal Welfare
David Grumett
Cascade Books £27
(979-8-3852-1860-8)
Church Times Bookshop £24.30