‘Religious believers should not use animals as food.’
After a somewhat longer than anticipated break, we are finally back! Regular blog posts will resume from this week. However, there will be a few changes:
Blog posts will now happen on Friday.
The accompanying ‘short versions’ will appear across social media on the same day.
We will now alternate GCSE and A-Level content.
This week’s question is a GCSE question, but it is a bit different than the ones we have done in the past — it is a ‘hypothetical question’, meaning it has never been used on an exam, but it could be used in the future.
‘Theme B: Religion and Life’ on the Specification mentions ‘the use of animals for food’ (AQA 2025: 22). To date, this topic has appeared in the following questions:
Explain two different religious beliefs about the use of animals for food.
In your answer you must refer to one or more religious traditions. [4 marks] (Specimen 2)Give one reason why many religious people use animals for food. [1 mark] (2020)
Explain two religious beliefs about the use of animals for food.
Refer to sacred writings or another source of religious belief and teaching in your answer. [6 marks] (2021)
Based on the structure of past 12-mark questions, we can make an educated guess that a 12-mark version of this question would be something like ‘Religious believers should not use animals as food’. A guide to answering it follows.
Caveat scriptor (‘writer beware’)
Depending on the combination of religions you have studied, this can be a tricky question to answer. In the Abrahamic religions (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the vast majority of practitioners do use animals as food, and have always done so (though Judaism and Islam have laws about which animals can be used as food). Indeed, there is relatively little in their sacred texts to suggest that animals should not be used as food. However, in the Dharmic religions (i.e. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), there are significant numbers of practitioners who do not use animals as food, and substantial support for this within the sacred texts.
Keep in mind, however, that while we can generalise about different religious traditions based on how many people within them use animals as food, we must not make absolute statements. For example, do not fall into the trap of writing that all Christians use animals as food, while all Buddhists do not. In fact, many Quaker Christians do not use animals as food, and see this as a necessary part of their Christian practice (Sniegocki 2019), while many Buddhist monks will eat meat if it is offered to them (Brahm 1990). If you frame your answer as ‘all Christians’ vs ‘all Buddhists’, you risk losing marks.
Indeed, for a question of this type, I strongly suggest writing about the debate over using animals as food within a single religious tradition, rather than across different traditions. The reason is that different religions accept different forms of evidence, and cannot easily reply to each other on specific issues like the use of animals for food. For example, Buddhists who do not eat animals base this on the Buddha’s teaching ‘one should not kill, nor cause another to kill’ (Dhammapada: v. 129). They value the Buddha’s teaching on this, because he is fully enlightened, and is laying out practices which will guide them towards enlightenment.
But the Christian’s goal is not to be enlightened in the Buddhist sense: indeed, they may not even believe that such a thing is possible. So the advice of an enlightened being (if, indeed, such a thing exists) is meaningless to a Christian. On the contrary, Christians are more likely to base their decision on what the Bible says about using animals as food. For Buddhists, though, the Bible has little value as a source of teaching, because it is not the work of a fully enlightened being. So, if you attempt to set Buddhist and Christian ideas against each other in an essay like this, you will end up having to evaluate the fundamental truth claims of each religion, rather than focussing more narrowly on the issue at hand.
So, here we will consider how to answer this question using only resources from within Christianity itself. I have chosen Christianity because it is the most widely-studied religion at GCSE and A-Level, and also because its sacred text, the Bible, has a surprisingly rich set of resources for discussing this topic. (In contrast, the sacred texts of the second most widely-studied religion at GCSE level, Islam, have very little to say on the subject; Ally 2009.) We will consider these resources below.
In the beginning
The key text for Christians who do not use animals as food is actually Genesis. Nearly everyone learns the famous ‘dominion’ verses which God speaks on the sixth day of Creation (and which are sometimes said to give humans unrestricted power over all living things); but surprisingly few people read the following paragraph, which limits that power somewhat. Taken together, they look like this:
So God created human beings in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female. God blessed them and said, ‘Have many children and grow in number. Fill the earth and be its master. Rule over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’
God said, ‘Look, I have given you all the plants that have grain for seeds and all the trees whose fruits have seeds in them. They will be food for you. I have given all the green plants as food for every wild animal, every bird of the air, and every small crawling animal.’ And it happened. God looked at everything he had made, and it was very good. Evening passed, and morning came. This was the sixth day. (Genesis 1. 27–31; emphasis mine)
From this verse, it appears that humans’ ‘dominion’ over all living things does not extend to eating them. On the contrary, only plants (and, if we read the text very literally, only grains and fruits) are said to be appropriate food for humans. It can be argued, then, that God originally intended for humans to live on plants alone. (As an aside, some Christians point to the verses ‘He created them male and female’ and ‘Have many children’ as evidence that gender affirmation and homosexual acts are sins, but then ignore the verse about only eating plants.)
Further evidence that this was God’s original plan can be found in the book of Isaiah. This book, famously, contains the prophecies which Christians believe refer to Jesus (this is why it is the first reading of Midnight Mass in the Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions). However, Christians also believe that Isaiah contains descriptions of the Kingdom of God, the perfected world that will come into existence after the Day of Judgement. One description follows:
Then wolves will live in peace with lambs,
and leopards will lie down to rest with goats.
Calves, lions, and young bulls will eat together,
and a little child will lead them. (Isaiah 11. 6; emphasis mine)
In our world, wolves and leopards eat meat: there is no possibility of their living ‘in peace’ with prey animals like lambs and goats. But, recall that in Genesis 1 God says, ‘I have given all the green plants as food for every wild animal’ (emphasis mine). One interpretation of this line is that God originally intended for all animals to live on plants, and meat eating in general only entered the world along with sin. In the Kingdom of God, however, everything will be restored to its original design, and no animals will be used as food anymore, even by other animals.
On the basis of these lines, some people claim that Christians should not use animals as food. They accept that animals have no say in the matter and must continue to eat each other until the arrival of the Kingdom of God, but Christians are called to live as though the Kingdom of God has already arrived. And since God did not want humans to eat animals in the first place, and humans will not eat animals in the Kingdom of God, Christians should not eat animals now.
To be clear, the above is a minority position within Christianity. Most Christians have always used animals as food, and at times the Church has even acted with suspicion towards those who did not (Gershon 2025). But, the verses and the logic outlined above are unavoidably problematic for Christians who want to do this, and so some kind of reply has been required. The Bible provides resources for this too.
A New Creation
The Book of Genesis famously recounts the story of the ‘Great Flood’ (i.e. the story of Noah’s Ark), in which God floods the entire earth, keeping alive only one family (and a few of each type of animal) to repopulate it afterwards. Christians have historically understood this as a sort of ‘soft reboot’ of the world: the same setting and premise as Genesis 1–2, but with a different cast of characters. After the waters recede, God makes an agreement (or ‘covenant’) with the survivors — the new cast of ‘first humans’ — in which God lays out the order of creation again, just as God did for the original first humans of Genesis 1. This agreement, however, is slightly altered from the original:
Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Have many children; grow in number and fill the earth. Every animal on earth, every bird in the sky, every animal that crawls on the ground, and every fish in the sea will respect and fear you. I have given them to you.
Everything that moves, everything that is alive, is yours for food. Earlier I gave you the green plants, but now I give you everything for food. But you must not eat meat that still has blood in it, because blood gives life. I will demand blood for life. I will demand the life of any animal that kills a person, and I will demand the life of anyone who takes another person’s life.’ (Genesis 9. 1–5; emphasis mine)
Notice that God does not just change the rules, God explicitly notes the change: before, humans were only given plants for food; now, they are given animals too. (Note too that the dietary laws of the Hebrew Scriptures, which are introduced here with the rule against eating blooded meat, are actually a loosening of the original dietary law, which banned all forms of meat.) For many Christians, this is decisive — God’s design changed after the Flood, and since we live in the post-Flood (or ‘Postdiluvian’) world, we should follow this new design, rather than the original.
It can be objected that this design represents a compromise, and that Christians should try to live a lifestyle modelled on the pre-Flood (or ‘Antediluvian’) world, which will be restored in the Kingdom of God. However, there is a problem with this argument. For many Christians, the resurrected Jesus is the first example of the Kingdom, and if His post-resurrection acts are representative of life in the Kingdom, then at least some forms of animal are still (literally) on the table. Consider the following passage, in which the resurrected Jesus appears before his disciples.
While the two followers were telling this, Jesus himself stood right in the middle of them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’
They were fearful and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus said, ‘Why are you troubled? Why do you doubt what you see? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have a living body as you see I have.’
After Jesus said this, he showed them his hands and feet. While they still could not believe it because they were amazed and happy, Jesus said to them, ‘Do you have any food here?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish. While the followers watched, Jesus took the fish and ate it. (Luke 24. 36–42; emphasis mine)
For many Christians, the significance of this passage is its demonstration that the Kingdom of God, and our ‘resurrection bodies’, will be in some sense physical. But it is surely not unimportant that Jesus is eating a piece of fish, which is a type of animal. Remember, for Christians Jesus is the incarnation of God: the only completely sinless person, and a model of how humans should act. To put it simply, if God eats fish, then so can humans.
Constructing your essay
We have reviewed two arguments against Christians using animals as food, and two arguments in favour of this. This is enough for you to construct an essay. In the essay below, we will argue in favour of Christians using animals as food, using the ‘dominion’ argument to tip the balance in favour of this position. Note that this essay uses the POV → Objection 1 → Reply 1 → Objection 2 → Reply 2 structure. However, if you prefer the Quaestio Disputata structure, you can simply re-arrange the arguments in the appropriate order.
I argue that Christians should use animals as food. In the Creation story, God first makes the world, then explains how it should work. After making humans, God says to them ‘Rule over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth’ (Genesis 1. 28). This is called ‘dominion’, and it means humans have permission to use the animals in any way they like. This includes using them as food. So, it is clear that Christians can use animals as food, because this was part of God’s plan for the world.
However, other Christians argue that they should not use animals s food. They point out that literally the next thing God says to humans is ‘Look, I have given you all the plants that have grain for seeds and all the trees whose fruits have seeds in them. They will be food for you’ (Genesis 1. 29). So while humans do have dominion over the animals, this does not include permission to eat them. On the contrary, God tells humans to eat grain and fruit. Humans’ dominion over animals is actually their responsibility to keep the animals safe and look after them.
But I reply that God does want humans to use animals as food. After the Great Flood, God tells Noah and his family ‘Everything that moves, everything that is alive, is yours as food. Earlier I gave you the green plants, but now I give you everything as food’ (Genesis 9. 3). This command comes straight from God — it is not the words of a prophet or the interpretation of a rabbi or religious leader. God himself says that humans can use animals as food. Since God is Christians’ source of right and wrong, it follows that they can use animals as food.
However, other Christians argue that Christians should not use animals as food. They allow that God tells Noah it is not a sin. But they argue God would rather people lived like the first humans and only ate plants. They point out that in the Kingdom of God ‘wolves will live in peace with lambs | and leopards will lie down to rest with goats’ (Isaiah 11. 6). This means that in God’s perfect world, the meat-eating animals will not eat meat anymore. Christians try to live like they are in the Kingdom of God already, and this means not using animals as food.
But I reply that God does want Christians to use animals as food. When Jesus resurrected and appeared to the disciples, he ate some fish with them (Luke 24. 36–42). For Christians, Jesus is God incarnate — He never sins, and is Christians’ model for how to live a perfect life for God. If Jesus ate fish, then it must not be a sin to use animals as food. What is more, Jesus did this after his resurrection. He did it in his resurrection body, which is the type of body that we will have in the Kingdom of God. This means that even in the Kingdom of God, Christians should use animals as food.
Some final notes:
I have included the biblical references in the model essay, but you would not need to do this on the exam. What you might do, however, is start making flashcards with these verses. I deliberately return to the same verses again and again, so in a very short while you will build up a bank of verses to use in your own writing.
I have not explained the ‘dominion’ argument in any detail. I trust it is easy enough to follow here, but do not worry if it is not: there will be an essay going into more detail on this argument going up in the next couple of weeks.
The question of using animals as food also appears in the ‘Christianity’ section of the A-Level Specification. The above essay would be too simple to use there, but it could form the basis of an essay that would.
References
Ally, Shabir. 2009. ‘Can Muslims Be Vegetarians?’, Let the Qur’an Speak <https://youtu.be/1YdSor9fZRY?si=iNYRuqB-Wvx7N69-> [accessed 29 January 2026]
AQA. 2025. ‘GCSE Religious Studies A GCSE (8062) Specification’, v. 1.3.1, AQA <https://cdn.sanity.io/files/p28bar15/green/ab272d86486eb6b391a2c33de9072a5031e0f584.pdf?_gl=1*ujtfom*_gcl_au*MjAzOTI5MjM3MS4xNzY5Njk0MjE3> [accessed 29 January 2026]
Brahm, Ajahn. 1990. ‘Vinaya: What the Buddha Says About Eating Meat’, Buddhist Society of Western Australia <https://bswa.org/teaching/vunaya-buddha-says-eating-meat/> [accessed 29 January 2026]
Gershon, Livia. 2025. ‘Vegetarian Heretics and the Christian Church’, JSTOR Daily <https://daily.jstor.org/vegetarian-heretics-and-the-christian-church/> [29 January 2026]
Hunter, Drew. 2014. ‘Why Study the Book of Isaiah?’, Crossway <https://www.crossway.org/articles/why-study-the-book-of-isaiah/?srsltid=AfmBOorlAzRGXz-89Un49E8vTPLaGLakxY2vkUFCFSgHbc2ij2wal6yN> [accessed 29 January 2026]
Sniegocki, John. 2019. ‘Vegetarianism in Quaker History’, Friends Journal <https://www.friendsjournal.org/vegetarian-history/> [accessed 29 January 2026]