43 Quotes About Factory-farming

The same patriarchy that oppresses women oppresses nonhuman animals. Farmed animals and “housewives,” “lab” animals and prostitutes, dancing bears and girls in the sex trade—all have too long been exploited by the same patriarchal hierarchy wherein the comparatively weak are exploited for the benefit of the powerful.

Inasmuch as animal products in Westernized nations are brought to the table only by exploiting those who are less powerful—usually in an extremely gruesome manner—those who stand against exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful will need to select vegan food options whenever possible.

With regard to farmed animals, we are the ones who are in power. We are the ones who have the power to change our consumer habits. We are the ones who either put our money down for their lives, or boycott animal products.

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. . . . American meat eaters were responsible for about 198 deaths per person in 2009, which accumulates to about 15,000 animals in the course of one individual’s lifetime.

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.

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. Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.

We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

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.

In the racist, sexist, speciesist United States, non-white racialized minorities and women are subjected to more than their share of horrific violence, but no human being would wish to trade places with nonhuman animals in a factory farm or laboratory.