There are, everywhere and at all times, important records in human’s history regarding the human-animal relationship by great characters.

One of them, the Indian Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), an influential defender of the principle of non-aggression, of non-violence, says, “I feel that spiritual progress requires, at a certain stage, that we stop killing our companions, the animals, for the satisfaction of our bodily desires.” *

It is known that industrial technology can today perfectly create substitutes for most of what animals can offer, including food, and that would fully satisfy “our bodily desires”.

I understand that Gandhi's thought links the dependence on animal sacrifice to meet the body's desires to the distance that separates us from a good spiritual condition.

In other words: having reached a certain stage of spiritual progress, maintaining age-old habits of aggression is nonsense; it just means psychic conditioning to which man is subject to accommodation, and which he can abandon if he wants to. Moreover, when we become aware, more and more clearly, that animals are souls in evolution, they are beings that are part of the structure of life on the planet, therefore essential to the general balance, which will only be maintained with an attitude of respect and preservation to all Life forms.

But what about world hunger, how is it?

There are those who disagree with Gandhi, saying, “How can we be concerned with sentimentality while hunger and misery spread across the world? It is necessary to keep working and even expand the economic network that generates jobs and feeds the world! And they conclude: Why discuss this question, when there are so many more important things?”

There is a question: Does man slaughter animals to meet humanity's hunger or primarily to meet a consumer market? Why do huge populations not have access to meat? Why does not the steady increase in the raising and slaughtering of animals diminish the growing hunger?

The issues involved are complex and intertwined, it is true. However, it is necessary to say that the main objective of this “industry” is financial and that a few people and groups benefit from it.

In this discussion, it is necessary to consider the difference between animal production in industrialized and traditional societies. In traditional societies in less developed regions of the planet, animal husbandry has the economic value of subsistence, also associated with social and cultural identities. Quite different from production in industrialized societies, whose main objective is profit.

Therefore, any change that the sector adopts in the sense of humanizing this food custom must begin with a change in the mentality of the “big lords” of meat producers, as well as increasing individual initiatives are changing habits, intending to let animals live their lives in peace.

By way of information

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 report, released by the UN (UN News and CNN Brazil) points out that the number of people affected by hunger worldwide rose to 828 million in 2021, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), hunger affects one in nine people in the world. There are more than 800 million malnourished people”, says in an article the journalist Aline Baroni, from Mercy for Animals, an international non-profit animal defense organization.

By way of information, and I would say an accusation, the mentioned article says, “Half of all the protein produced in the world is used as animal feed. In Brazil, this number is even more alarming. Around here, 79% is transformed into animal feed, while only 16% is destined for human consumption. 75% of the planet's arable land is used for grazing and feed production. There is not enough land, water and inputs to produce the meat needed to feed the world's ever-growing population.”

Therefore, there is a mismatch between the food needs of the world's poorest populations and global meat production, which serves economic interests more than any other demand.

There is an infinity of studies and statistics that prove this demeaning mismatch, which shows the urgent need to develop new solutions (which already exist) to feed humanity, with less devastation, hypocrisy and impiety.

In my view, the arguments against Gandhi's position are out of date. They cannot, nowadays, prevail over the right to life; they cannot be indefinitely in time, above the feeling of pity and the appeals of reason; they cannot override man's number one priority, which is his spiritual development (read again Gandhi's sentence).

No ban, but awareness.

Man is the evolutionary synthesis (still partial) of a process that went through the animal kingdom before. Can you imagine human life on Earth without the contribution of the living animal? Spiritists know that in more advanced worlds animals are piously respected and have great importance in tasks with those humanities. Here, too, they help man, in addition to being fundamental in the balance of planetary life. It is a question, then, of initiating a process of softening human customs in relation to them. No ban, but awareness; a more comprehensive look at all kinds of life.

With the knowledge we have today, it is possible to build a new relationship with the animal world, just as new models of behavior have been proposed with reference to the environment, mental health, social life, the understanding of spirituality... This reasoning comes to me when I read Mahatma’s statement (in Sanskrit, “Great Soul”).

There are changes in our world that take decades, centuries and sometimes millennia to consolidate. However, “at a certain stage” of our spiritual progress, Gandhi's idea of our animal companions needs to go beyond a simple philosophical concept to become a reality. Are we not already entering that civilizational period where routines, uses and practices need to be modified? The planet and its inhabitants seem to be asking for this transition.

From smallest to largest, from most to least

Therefore, we are all called to contribute for the new ideas that stir the human spirit and ask for a solution. If you do not feel strong enough to face the greater evils, start by attacking the smallest ones. Small challenges can be attempted, such as quitting smoking; leaving or decreasing the intake of alcoholics; eat less meat or eliminate red meat to begin a change process. Decrease consumption of everything. Recycle. Reuse. Fix what can be fixed, as well as many other things. The benefits will be for everyone. Above all, to assume a loving, fraternal mentality, which is what truly transforms. The adoption of small behavioral attitudes will have repercussions in the moral field.

The fact is that we arrive at the sad realization of how much humanity still needs to advance towards the laws of love lived by Jesus of Nazareth and so well discussed in the moral appeals of the rich Spiritist bibliography. Finally, we have to start.

Everything in its time, but according to the Spirits, “The times have already arrived”.

*www.pensador.com