Animal Agriculture Quotes

“Bacon would not be a choice if the pig had any say in the matter. A lamb, given the gift of speech, would most probably say "no" if you asked if you could eat her leg. Fish would no doubt choose to stay in the water, if they could and I feel pretty sure turkeys must object once their Christmas fête (or should that be fate?) is made clear to them. Chickens are surely protesting from having their eggs systematically stolen and freedoms restricted, and both cows and their calves would be up in arms, if they had any, with the theft of their milk and violent separation. Given the chance, bees will attack and defend ferociously, even sacrificing themselves in the process, in order to protect their precious honey; a sure sign they do not part with it voluntarily.”
― Mango Wodzak, Destination Eden - Eden Fruitarianism Explained

“Thanks to government sub­sidies, a diet rich in animal products is affordable even though it destroys the earth”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“The number of individuals enslaved and slaughtered on factory farms every year exponentially surpasses—by trillions—any form of exploitation of human beings anywhere, at any time.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“Cheap meat, dairy, and eggs are an illusion–we pay for each with depleted forests, polluted freshwater, soil degradation, and climate change.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Grass fed meat is an environmental nightmare perpetuated by elitists who refuse to change their eating habits.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Because most of us are shielded (or shield ourselves) from the unpleasant realities associated with the routine use of animals, we can maintain a view of ourselves as animal lovers by being kind to the few living animals we personally encounter.”
― Grace Clement

“The world’s most celebrated religions teach people that the world around us, our environment, is sacred. A diet rooted in anymal products is exponentially more harmful to the earth than is a plant-based diet. Seventy percent more land must be cultivated in order to raise anymals for food than would be necessary for a vegan diet. This means that 70 percent more land is taken away from natural ecosystems to produce flesh, nursing milk, and bird’s reproductive eggs for consumption, and this land that is necessary for a diet rich in anymal products will be sprayed with pesticides and earth-damaging fertilizers. These additional crops—70 percent more—also need to be irrigated, using exponentially more water. Anymals exploited by food industries also drink millions of gallons of water and drop millions of tons of manure. Finally, raising animals for flesh contributes significantly to carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, chlorofluorocarbons, and methane—global climate change.”
― Lisa Kemmerer

“Animal agriculture causes more environmental damage than any other industry, but it makes no sense to hate bovines with hamburger in hand.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Earth and animal activists need to join forces against powerful corporations that are destroying both the earth and anymals.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Worldwide, animal agriculture emits more carbon dioxide than any other single source.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“Thanks to animal agriculture, our water contains an abundance of manure, pesticides, antibiotics, nitrates, and arsenic.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“The largest sources of CO2 from animal agriculture come not from the animals themselves (through respiration and waste), but from the inputs and land-use changes necessary to maintain and feed them, including: burning fossil fuels to produce fertilisers used in feed production; maintaining intensive animal production facilities; growing the associated animal feed; transporting the animal feed; and processing and transporting the animal products. Furthermore, clearing land to graze livestock and grow feed is the largest single cause of deforestation and among the major causes of land degradation and desertification.”
― Jason Hannan, Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial

“When Carol arrived at the sanctuary, she had pink spray paint on her back, marking her to be slaughtered. Her muscles were weak from being confined for most of her life to a sow stall, she was given fruit to eat but didn’t know what to do with it, having never seen fruit in her life. But that same day, after a little warming up, she got excited and started running and dancing around the paddock happily. She also had her very first mud bath. Now, a few months on, Carol has settled well into her new sanctuary life. She was introduced to the other pig residents, has established herself within the pecking order, and has seemingly even adopted a son, Iggle Piggle, a younger pig. The two are inseparable and are often found cuddling together. We like to think of Iggle Piggle as the son she never got to keep, having had between 80–120 piglets taken from her in her 4–5 year lifespan.”
― Jason Hannan, Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial

“No one really knowswhy, but antibiotics make farmed animals grow faster. This has resulted in agribusiness using a phenomenal 25,000,000 pounds here - that's eight times the amount used to treat human illnesses. We are increasingly making ourselves vulnerable to bacterial infections and are developing immunity to normal lines of antibiotic treatment.”
― Gene Baur

“The beast sits on our doorstep, lies next to us in bed, hides inside our flesh. We are the Nazis. There is no escaping it.”
― Sue Coe, The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto

“When the meat animals and the meat birds and almost all the fish species that humans had consumed died out, there was a great deal of hand-wringing, of course, and widespread recognition that maybe, just maybe, our own behavior had had something to do with it, that the diseases wouldn’t have spread so quickly if the creatures hadn’t been packed thousands upon thousands together in feedlots or in dark and poorly ventilated sheds, if science hadn’t been taken so aggressively to extremes to make each carcass uniformly productive, if the number of species hadn’t been so greatly reduced, in turn drastically reducing resistance to disease, or if antibiotics hadn’t been used so frequently and so thoughtlessly, quietly paving the way for the pandemics.”
― Don LePan, Animals