Ingrid Newkirk Quotes

When I was twenty-one, a friend gave me a book called Diet for a New America by John Robbins, which exposed the brutal practices of American factory farms. That, coupled with a lecture from Leonardo DiCaprio (when he was nineteen and I was twenty-one) about how such animals are kept and processed, made me lose my desire for factory farm pork and beef right there.

When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

I don't like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don't like factory farming. I'm not an advocate for the meat industry.

I became a vegetarian after I became aware of factory farming and slaughterhouses and the torture and inhumane handling of all these animals.

I watched the 'Food, Inc.' documentary and was like, 'This has opened my eyes to the meat industry - maybe I should go vegetarian.' And my friend told me, 'Sadie, you're not gonna last a week.' But I'm very competitive.

We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often at the center of our plates. This doesn't require that we pretend we are going to have a collective agreement. However strong our intuitions are about what's right for us personally and even about what's right for others, we all know in advance that our positions will clash with those of our neighbors. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it?

My wife Kimora once told me while we were watching "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" that it's a vegetarian movie because the way that the woman was screaming, "Aaaahhh," and trying to run away is how every animal you eat reacted at the slaughterhouse.

Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.

It's just that I have this funny objection to torturing small animals no matter how scrumptious their body parts might be. ... Our food industries are equal opportunity abusers: cows, chickens, pigs, and a special mention to those little calves who for their short, miserable lives are locked into crates too small to allow movement just so we can eat veal.

I often pass a farm with cows grazing in the field and I think to myself how terrible it is that human beings grow other animals just to kill them and eat them. Most of us think of vegetarians as nuts and I'm not a vegetarian but I wouldn't be surprised if we came to a time in 50 or 100 years when civilized people everywhere refused to eat animals.

If a kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming, they would never touch meat again.

Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs...

Like other Americans, I've reconciled myself to the idea that an animal's life has been sacrificed to bring me a meal of pork or chicken. However, industrial meat production - which subjects animals to a life of torture - has escalated the karmic costs beyond reconciliation.

For most humans, especially for those in modern urban and suburban communities, the most direct form of contact with nonhuman animals is at meal time: we eat them.... The use and abuse of animals raised for food far exceeds, in sheer numbers of animals affected, any other kind of mistreatment.

The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It's already happening.

I won't eat veal, and my mum won't eat lamb, because she thinks it's a bit harsh to eat cute things.

I like animals, I really do, but some animals are just meant to be eaten.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian.

I've always been opposed to slaughtering, eating, and wearing carcasses.

I stopped eating beef in high school, and in college I stopped eating poultry. I am not a huge fan of factory farming and what we're doing to animals. I try to eat as clean as possible because I want to know what I'm putting into my body.

Animals were my pets, and the thought of eating my pets freaked me out.

One hates to be absolute, but in my view, there is no such thing as humane meat.

There really is no ethical difference between eating a cat or a chicken, a dog or a pig.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch.