“Well, my dear Benjamin, the early church has everything to say about everything, of course! Animals might not be addressed specifically, but the implications, the implications …! I’m not sure what you mean by early … how early? And then if you widen the topic from animals to diet, you find the classic debates about eating meat, which do include concern for animals, and vegetarianism of various varieties … So I must disagree with you!”

I responded in turn, “I … checked your early church chapter in Good Eating. Skimming that section, and from what I remember of other similar historical reviews, I definitely saw the attention to dietary issues, mostly in terms of fasting and ascetism, but again, I didn’t pick up on a specifically strong concern for animal welfare as being explicitly present, aside from the very rare recorded exception. I believe the timeframe most relevant to my current post would be pre-Catholic/Orthodox split.”

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between, but if interested, do consult Webb’s Good Eating or other works such as Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan’s Animals & Christianity: A Book of Readings.