“It is all very well to say that individuals must wrestle with their consciences—but only if their consciences are awake and informed. Industrial society, alas, hides animals’ suffering. Few people would themselves keep a hen in a shoebox for her egg-laying life; but practically everyone will eat smartly packaged, ‘farm fresh’ eggs from battery hens…milk drinkers do not see the calves torn from their mothers.”

The Economist, “What Humans Owe to Animals,” 8/19/95

“For modern animal agriculture, the less the consumer knows about what’s happening before the meat hits the plate, the better.

“If true, is this an ethical situation?

“Should we be reluctant to let people know what really goes on, because we’re not really proud of it and concerned that it might turn them to vegetarianism?”

Peter Cheeke, PhD, Oregon State U. Professor of Animal Agriculture
Contemporary Issues in Animal Agriculture, 2004 textbook

“There’s a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig—an animal easily as intelligent as a dog—that becomes the Christmas ham.”

The New York Times Magazine, “An Animal’s Place”
by Michael Pollan, 11/10/02