On Eating Animals

Annie Besant in 1897
But if we could not [slaughter animals ourselves], nor see it done; if we are so refined that we cannot allow close contact between ourselves and the butchers who furnish this food; if we feel that they are so coarsened by their trade that their very bodies are made repulsive by the constant contact of the blood with which they must be continually besmirched; if we recognize the physical coarseness which results inevitably from such contact, dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase our refinement by the brutalization of others, and demand that some should be brutal in order that we may eat the results of their brutality? We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no part in it. [TOP]

The Holy Bible, Isaiah 66:3
He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. [TOP]

Lord Kenneth Clark, 1903-1983
We love animals, we watch them with delight, we study their habits with ever-increasing curiosity; and we destroy them. We have sacrificed them to the gods, we have killed them in arenas in order to enjoy a cruel excitement, we still hunt them, and we slaughter them by the millions out of greed ... The overwhelming majority eat their kinsmen without a thought. They do not think of the stockyards and slaughterhouses which, in most places, are kept decently out of sight. They look with rapture at the newborn lambs without considering why in the end they are there. [TOP]

Professor Stephen R.L. Clark, 1945-
Those who still eat flesh when they could do otherwise have no claim to be serious moralists. [TOP]

Philippe Hecquet, 1661-1737
It is incredible how much prejudice has been allowed to perate in favor of meat, while so many facts are opposed to the pretended necessity of its use. [TOP]

Hinduism
He who does not eat meat becomes dear to men, and will not be tormented by diseases. He who permits the slaughter of an animal, he who kills it, he who cuts it up, he who buys or sells meat, he who cooks it, he who serves it up, and he who eats it, are all slayers. There is no greater sinner than that man who seeks to increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings. [TOP]

Jainism
Flesh cannot be procured without causing destruction of life; one who uses flesh, therefore, commits himsa [injury] unavoidably. [TOP]

Soame Jenyns, 1704-1787
The butcher knocks down the stately ox with no more compassion than the blacksmith hammers a horseshoe, and plunges his knife into the throat of an innocent lamb with as little reluctance as the tailor sticks his needle into the collar of a coat. [TOP]

Franz Kafka, 1883-1924
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. Reported remark made while admiring fish in an aquarium [TOP]

Alphonse Marie Louis de LaMartine
My mother took me with her to the town and led me, as by chance, through the Shambles. There I saw men with blood-stained arms felling a bullock. Others were killing calves and sheep and cutting off their still-palpitating limbs. Streams of blood smoked here and there upon the pavement. I was seized with a profound pity, mingled with horror, and asked to be taken away. The idea of these horrible and repulsive scenes, the necessary preliminaries of the dinner I saw served at table, made me hold animal food in disgust, and butchers in horror. [TOP]

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators. [TOP]

Thomas Tryon, 1634-1703
Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression. [TOP]

Henry L. Nunn
I felt sure the chicken suffered, and could not bear to watch the process [of neck-wringing]. Why? If there was nothing wrong about it, why had God put compassion for these sentient creatures into my heart? And if this compassion made it wrong for me to kill, why was it not just as cruel to pay someone else to do it for me by purchasing flesh foods? [TOP]

Plutarch, c. a.d. 46-c. 120
I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason, that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, with perception and with voice.
    Also: But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
    Also: It is from ... the eveness of our teeth, the smallness of our mouth, the softness of our tongues, our possession of vital fluids too inert to digest meat that Nature disavows our eating of flesh. If you decide you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of axe. [TOP]

Porphyry, 233-304
But to deliver animals to be slaughtered and cooked, and thus be filled with murder, not for the sake of nutriment and satisfying the wants of nature, but making pleasure and gluttony the end of such conduct, is transcendently iniquitous and dire. [TOP]

Pythagoras, 6th century b.c.
Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another! In the midst of such wealth as earth, the best of mothers, provides, nothing forsooth satisfies you, but to behave like the Cyclopes, inflicting sorry wounds with cruel teeth! You cannot appease the hungry cravings of your wicked, gluttonous stomachs except by destroying some other life. [TOP]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778
The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures who harm no one, who follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service. [TOP]

Ernest Bell
We cannot by any stretch of amiability say, or feel, that the meat-eater is actuated by any lofty motive in his choice. He has no unselfish ideal to work out in the matter. His whole effort is to defend or excuse that which his feelings all the time tell him is a selfish and cruel practice. He has to shut his eyes to much that he dares not face, to try to invent so-called scientific reasons to excuse that which in itself is obviously very undesirable and discreditable — "a painful necessity," as he sometimes call it. [TOP]

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All Heaven in a Rage: Essays on the Eating of Animals (edited by Laura A. Moretti) is available for $10 (includes shipping) from MBK Publishing, 1354 East Avenue, #252, Chico, CA 95926.

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