I’m afraid he’s right: I don’t see that. The individual purchaser is so remote in the causal chain that I doubt buying this chicken even qualifies as material cooperation in the evils he cites. A similar argument could be made that one supports any number of bad things by paying one’s taxes. (Of course, paying taxes, unlike buying a particular brand of chicken, isn’t voluntary, in the sense that one couldn’t choose not to without suffering a stiff penalty. But isn’t coerced participation in evil even more worthy of resistance?)

It’s true that if no one bought this chicken, the company would go out of business and the exploitation would cease — in its particular case. But that strikes me as trivial. If a company is not willing to act ethically, the responsibility for the exploitation falls first of all on the government, which refuses to enforce standing laws that would prevent these evils, secondly on the distributors and stores that buy the chicken, etc.

I don’t condone these practices or that I think that it is necessarily futile for individual purchasers to try to influence them (I think Bruce’s criteria are sensible, for instance), but in cases like this “doing something” is supererogatory. Citing buying a particular brand of chicken as evidence of a lack of Christian unity is laying too heavy a burden on one’s fellows. An operative phrase in Bruce’s post is “whenever possible”. I would go to the cheapest brain surgeon if I needed brain surgery and he was all I could afford.

If we’re concerned about having a unity of life, there is plenty of material for examination a lot closer to home. I’m certainly not impugning Mr. Salatin, but I think it is a particular temptation of our culture to be more concerned, like Mrs. Jellyby, with what is remote than with what is going on under our own roofs.