In an interview, Pope Benedict XVI, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was asked by German journalist Peter Seewald about his views on animal welfare (Pope Benedict XVI. God and the world: a conversation with Peter Seewald. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002; 78). The future Pope responded with empathy, calling animals our "companions in creation." He went on to advise that,
we cannot just do whatever we want with them. ... Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.
