These factory farmers calculate how close to death they can keep the animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying.

Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

Cruelty: Not only the willful causing of unnecessary suffering, but the indifference to it.

As told by Kafka's close friend Max Brod:"Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. 'Now at least I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore.' It was the time he turned strictly vegetarian.

Every turkey sold in every store and served in every restaurant was the product of artificial insemination. If it were only for efficiency, that would be one thing, but these animals literally can’t reproduce naturally. Tell me what could be sustainable about that?

...Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable—the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

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.

The important measurement is not the distance from unattainable perfection, but from unforgivable inaction.