Eating Animals Quotes
"It wasn’t until years later that I realized she was weighing me."
"My grandmother taught me that one tea bag makes as many cups of tea as you’re serving."
"Eating was carefree. My grandmother made that life possible for us."
"We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God."
"Food, for her, is not food. It is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love."
"Without explanation or experience, he knew what to do."
"The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature."
"Our situation is so extreme that research scientists at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia argue that 'our interactions with fisheries resources [also known as fish] have come to resemble . . . wars of extermination.'"
"Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely — yet not entirely — forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification."
"The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it."
"Our tastes — not only our ideas about foods, but our preconscious cravings — were formed around his lessons."
"What might inspire such change? Few know the details about the contemporary meat and seafood industries, but most know the gist — at least that something isn’t right."
"If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can’t we revise our categorizations of the animals that end up as the ribs on our dinner plates?"
"KFC buys nearly a billion chickens a year — if you packed those chickens body to body, they would blanket Manhattan from river to river."
"If humans absolutely must eat animals, we should do so humanely, with respect for the other creatures in the world and with humility."
"Organic does signal better welfare if we are talking about laying hens or cattle."
"People at PETA love their dogs and cats but they are not especially motivated by a be-kind-to-dogs-and-cats ethic. They want a revolution."
"Virtually all of us agree that it matters how we treat animals and the environment, yet few of us give much thought to our most important relationship to animals and the environment."
"Is caring to know about the treatment of farmed animals a confrontation with the facts about the animals and ourselves or an avoidance of them?"
"The Berlin zoo houses the largest number of species of any zoo in the world, around 1,400."
"A word used by the industry to elide what is being referred to, which is suffering."
"The myth of consent has many versions, but all imply a 'fair deal' and, at least metaphorically, animal complicity in their own domestication and slaughter."
"The very genetics of chickens, along with their feed and environment, were now intensively manipulated to produce either excessive amounts of eggs or flesh."
"The folks at PETA will do almost anything legal to advance their campaigns, no matter how bad they look."
"If I misuse a corporation’s logo, I could potentially be put in jail; if a corporation abuses a billion birds, the law will protect not the birds, but the corporation’s right to do what it wants."
"When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting."
"Each case of food-borne illness cannot be traced, but where we do know the origin, it is, overwhelmingly, an animal product."
"The implications for creating drug-resistant pathogens are quite straightforward."
"We have chosen, unwittingly, to fund this industry on a massive scale by eating factory-farmed animal products."
"The global implications of the growth of the factory farm are genuinely terrifying."
"The demand for animal products leads to changes in farming practices."
"Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all individuals during all stages of the life cycle."
"Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol."
"The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods."
"Being vegetarian is a flexible framework, and I’ve left a mental state of constant personal decision making about eating animals for a steady commitment not to."
"The meat industry has tried to paint people who take this twofold stance as absolutist vegetarians hiding a radicalized agenda."
"Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King. Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful."
"We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That’s the truest version of our story of eating animals."
"I simply don’t want anything to do with the factory farm, and refraining from meat is the only realistic way for me to do that."
"The very genetics of our birds are radically different. If the Pilgrims could have seen into the future, what would they have thought of the turkey on our table?"
"The secrecy that has enabled the factory farm is breaking down."
"We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?"
"No work of investigative journalism on the topic is as comprehensive."
"The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit for any period of time, you develop an attitude that lets you kill things but doesn’t let you care."
"Just how common do such savageries have to be for a decent person to be unable to overlook them?"
"Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris."
"The responsibility lies with the mentality of the meat industry that treats both animals and ‘human capital’ like machines."
"Human beings cannot be human (much less humane) under the conditions of a factory farm or slaughterhouse."
"If we are at all serious about ending factory farming, then the absolute least we can do is stop sending checks to the absolute worst abusers."
"Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can."
"The question of eating animals is ultimately driven by our intuitions about what it means to reach an ideal we have named, perhaps incorrectly, 'being human.'"
"To accept the factory farm feels inhuman. To feed the food it produces to my family, to support it with my money — would make me less myself."
"One must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right."
"The ethical relationship of humanity to the animal kingdom has changed more in the past forty years than in the previous four thousand."
"When she is approaching the time to give birth, a sow will leave her group and seek a quiet place where she can be alone."
"Eating industrial meat takes an almost heroic act of not knowing or, now, forgetting."
"The technique goes like this: You have to kill it yourself."
"I have to say that, even at its best, vegetarianism is a bit dining-room-centric for me."
"There is no reason in the world why we cannot have an adequate and nutritious diet without the use of animals."
"The fact that animals are excited or fearful tells us that they can anticipate pain or pleasure."
"It takes six to twenty-six calories fed to a farm animal to produce just one calorie of food for a human."
"We will all farm by proxy, selecting for our tables animals that lived well, died without pain, and nourished the communities in which they lived."