Quotes About Ethics

Vegetarians are at best kindly but unrealistic. At worst they are delusional sentimentalists.

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)

me, not only because it seemed true, but because it was the extension to food of everything my parents had taught me. We don't hurt family members. We don't hurt friends or strangers. We don't even hurt upholstered furniture. My not having thought to include animals in that list didn't make them the exceptions to it.

Chickens once had a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years, but the modern broiler is typically killed at around six weeks. Their daily growth rate has increased roughly 400 percent.)

It's possible you can't afford to care, but it's certain you can't afford not to care.

That's what's at the bottom of all of this, and what each person has to ask himself. How much suffering will you tolerate for your food?

Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity. For some, that irrationality leads to a kind of resignation. Food

No podemos alegar ignorancia, solo indiferencia. Los que vivimos hoy sabemos más. Tenemos la oportunidad y la responsabilidad que nos da vivir en un momento en que la crítica hacia las granjas industriales ha llegado a la conciencia pública. Somos aquellos a quienes se nos preguntará, con toda la justicia del mundo: ¿Qué hiciste cuando te enteraste de lo que implica comer animales?

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it.

And I'll tell you another thing: if consumers don't want to pay the farmer to do it right, they shouldn't eat meat.

We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth of about eating animals?

Food matters and animals matter and eating animals matters even more. 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.

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity.

We have waged war, or rather let a war be waged, against all of the animals we eat. This war is new and has a name: factory farming.

Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless —it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another.

Those who defend pig factory farms argue that the farrowing crate is necessary because sows can sometimes accidentally crush their piglets. In the same way that the risk of a forest fire can be reduced by preemptively clearing the forest of all its trees, there is a cockeyed logic to this claim. The farrowing crate, like the gestation crate, confines the mother in a space so small she cannot turn around. Sometimes she will also be strapped to the floor.

Nie mo?emy wystÄ™powa? w obronie obojÄ™tnoÅ›ci i ignorancji. Kolejne pokolenia coraz wiÄ™cej wiedzÄ… o tym, jak wyglÄ…da dziaÅ'alno?? przemysÅ'u. Å»yjemy w czasach, w których krytyczne podejÅ›cie do chowu przemysÅ'owego staÅ'o siÄ™ cz??ciÄ… zbiorowej Å›wiadomoÅ›ci. To nas bÄ™dÄ… pyta?: jak zareagowaÅ'eÅ›, gdy dowiedziaÅ'eÅ› siÄ™ prawdy o zjadaniu zwierzÄ…t.

Historians tell a story about Abraham Lincoln, that while returning to Washington from Springfield, he forced his entire party to stop to help some small birds he saw in distress. When chided by the others, he responded, quite plainly, "I could not have slept to-night if I had left those poor creatures on the ground and not restored them to their mother.

Shame is the work of memory against forgetting. 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.

To accept the factory farm —to feed the food it produces to my family, to support it with my money —would make me less myself

Different people will draw the line in different places with regard to farms like Paul's and Frank's. People I respect draw it differently. But for me, for now —for my family now —my concerns about the reality of what meat is and has become are enough to make me give it up altogether.

it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?

The question of eating animals hits chords that resonate deeply with our sense of self—our memories, desires, and values. Those resonances are potentially controversial, potentially threatening, potentially inspiring, but always filled with meaning.