Cows Animal Farm Quotes

To identify with others is to see something of yourself in them and to see something of them in yourself--even if the only thing you identify with is the desire to be free from suffering.

It had become usual to give Napoleon the Credit for every Successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, “Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days” or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, “thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”...

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime, Hearken to my joyful tidings Of the golden future time. Soon or late the day is coming, Tyrant Man shall be o'erthrown, And the fruitful fields of England Shall be trod by beasts alone. Rings shall vanish from our noses, And the harness from our back, Bit and spur shall rust forever, Cruel whips shall no more crack. Riches more than mind can picture, Wheat and barley, oats and hay, Clover, beans, and mangel-wurzels, Shall be ours upon that day. Bright will shine the fields of England, Purer shall its water be, Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes On the day that sets us free. For that day we all must labour, Though we die before it break; Cows and horses, geese and turkeys, All must toils for freedom's sake. Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime, Hearken well and spread my tidings Of the golden future time.

Michael Pollan likens consumer choices to pulling single threads out of a garment. We pull a thread from the garment when we refuse to purchase eggs or meat from birds who were raised in confinement, whose beaks were clipped so they could never once taste their natural diet of worms and insects. We pull out a thread when we refuse to bring home a hormone-fattened turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. We pull a thread when we refuse to buy meat or dairy products from cows who were never allowed to chew grass, or breathe fresh air, or feel the warm sun on their backs. The more threads we pull, the more difficult it is for the industry to stay intact. You demand eggs and meat without hormones, and the industry will have to figure out how it can raise farm animals without them. Let the animals graze outside and it slows production. Eventually the whole thing will have to unravel. If the factory farm does indeed unravel - and it must - then there is hope that we can, gradually, reverse the environmental damage it has caused. Once the animal feed operations have gone and livestock are once again able to graze, there will be a massive reduction in the agricultural chemicals currently used to grow grain for animals. And eventually, the horrendous contamination caused by animal waste can be cleaned up. None of this will be easy. The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers of people around the world. But we must try. We must make a start, one by one.

Every time that an animal eats a plant or another animal, the conversion of food biomass into the consumer’s biomass involves an efficiency of much less than 100 percent: typically around 10 percent. That is, it takes around 10,000 pounds of corn to grow a 1,000-pound cow. If instead you want to grow 1,000 pounds of carnivore, you have to feed it 10,000 pounds of herbivore grown on 100,000 pounds of corn. Even among herbivores and omnivores, many species, like koalas, are too finicky in their plant preferences to recommend themselves as farm animals. As a result of this fundamental inefficiency, no mammalian carnivore has ever been domesticated for food.

I am no theologian, and do not have the answers to these questions, and one of the reasons I enjoy the animals on the farm so much is that they don't think about their pain, or question it, they accept it and endure it, true stoics. I have never heard a donkey or cow whine (although I guess dogs do). I told my friend this: pain, like joy, is a gift. It challenges us, tests, defines us, causes us to grow, empathize, and also, to appreciate its absence. If nothing else, it sharpens the experience of joy. The minute something happens to me that causes pain, I start wondering how I can respond to it, what I can learn from it, what it has taught me or shown me about myself. This doesn't make it hurt any less, but it puts it, for me, on a more manageable level. I don't know if there is a God, or if he causes me or anybody else to hurt, or if he could stop pain. I try to accept it and live beyond it. I think the animals have taught me that. The Problem of Pain is that it exists, and is ubiquitous. The Challenge of Pain is how we respond to it.

The ten billion animals that are killed every year for meat and the virulent consequences of contemporary animal agricultural practices remain conspicuously absent from public discourse. How often have you seen media exposés on the violent treatment of farm animals and the corrupt practices of carnistic industry? Compare this with the amount of coverage afforded fluctuating gas prices or Hollywood fashion blunders. Most of us are more outraged over having to pay five cents more for a gallon of gas than over the fact that billions of animals, millions of humans, and the entire ecosystem are systematically exploited by an industry that profits from such gratuitous violence. And most of us know more about what the stars wore to the Oscars than we do about the animals we eat.

They got a manure machine in there,” Keller said. He went up to the barn and peeked through a hole between tow boards. “On wheels. It’s fun to ride sometimes, when you don’t care how you smell.

Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn’t. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he’d turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn’t Fancy; he was a farmer.

Spheres are indeed fertile theoretical tools that help us gain insight into all manner of astrophysical problems. But one should not be a sphere-zealot. I am reminded of the half-serious joke about how to increase milk production on a farm: An expert in animal husbandry might say, "Consider the role of the cow's diet..." An engineer might say, "Consider the design of the milking machines..." But it's the astrophysicist who says, "Consider a spherical cow...

There was a fair mixture of animals in the long building. The dairy cows took up most of the length, then there were a few young heifers, some bullocks and finally, in an empty stall deeply bedded with straw, the other farm dogs. The cats were there too, so it had to be warm. No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat and they were just visible as furry balls in the straw. They had the best place, up against the wooden partition where the warmth came through from the big animals.

Females – sows and cows and hens and women – suffer because of their sex in Western patriarchal cultures, where female bodies are exploited as sex symbols, for reproduction, for breast milk, and/or for reproductive eggs. As such, farmed animals are at the very bottom of the contemporary, Western hierarchy of beings – and this is speceisism.

I became a vegan the day I watched a video of a calf being born on a factory farm. The baby was dragged away from his mother before he hit the ground. The helpless calf strained its head backwards to find his mother. The mother bolted after her son and exploded into a rage when the rancher slammed the gate on her. She wailed the saddest noise I’d ever heard an animal make, and then thrashed and dug into the ground, burying her face in the muddy placenta. I had no idea what was happening respecting brain chemistry, animal instinct, or whatever. I just knew that this was deeply wrong. I just knew that such suffering could never be worth the taste of milk and veal. I empathized with the cow and the calf and, in so doing, my life changed.

An old tradition holds that at the Last Judgment, the non-human creatures of the earth will be called by God to "give evidence" against each human being. The idea pops up in books and stories about the Creation, deemed a myth, but a persistent, imposing, even haunting one: We will be judged by the very creatures so dependent on us. So I treat, and will continue to treat, my animals - the dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and cows - with that in mind. They will give evidence. What would I want them to say?

Evolutionary psychology maintains that the emotional and social needs of farm animals evolved in the wild, when they were essential for survival and reproduction. For example, a wild cow had to know how to form close relations with other cows and bulls, or else she could not survive and reproduce. In order to learn the necessary skills, evolution implanted in calves – as in the young of all other social mammals – a strong desire to play (playing is the mammalian way of learning social behaviour). And it implanted in them an even stronger desire to bond with their mothers, whose milk and care were essential for survival.

Organic” labels do nothing for a cow who is perpetually impregnated and milked, who loses her calf to the veal industry—or to protect her calf, who is sold at birth to the veal industry to be slaughtered. “Organic” products are designed to optimize human health and reduce environmental degradation. Those who invest in organic products are not making a choice that promotes the well-being of farmed animals.

What’s really strange is that memory works the same way: by area-restricted search. If I ask you to list all the animals you can think of, you are likely to begin with the category of “pets” and list cats, dogs, goldfish, parakeets. Once you run out of items in that category, you’ll move on (like the pigeon who can find no more crumbs) to another category: farm animals such as cows, chickens, pigs, goats, and horses.

The scariest thing is that nobody seems to be considering the impact on those wild fish of fish farming on the scale that is now being proposed on the coast of Norway or in the open ocean off the United States. Fish farming, even with conventional techniques, changes fish within a few generations from an animal like a wild buffalo or a wildebeest to the equivalent of a domestic cow. Domesticated salmon, after several generations, are fat, listless things that are good at putting on weight, not swimming up fast-moving rivers. When they get into a river and breed with wild fish, they can damage the wild fish's prospects of surviving to reproduce. When domesticated fish breed with wild fish, studies indicate the breeding success initially goes up, then slumps as the genetically different offspring are far less successful at returning to the river. Many of the salmon in Norwegian rivers, which used to have fine runs of unusually large fish, are now of farmed origin. Domesticated salmon are also prone to potentially lethal diseases, such as infectious salmon anemia, which has meant many thousands have had to be quarantined or killed. They are also prone to the parasite Gyrodactylus salaris, which has meant that whole river systems in Norway have had to be poisoned with the insecticide rotenone and restocked.

To tell the history of the Americas is to tell the story of bovine expansion. Settlers may have made the Wild West and the frontier, but they followed in the wake of their bovine brother. No other animal has so shaped a culture. So many American icons are associated with the cow: the cowboy, the western, the rodeo, the hamburger, the steak house, the Marlboro Man, the very notion of the frontier itself. The story began more than five centuries ago.

We’ve created mass production at low prices, a system that operates under duress. There are stressed-out pigs who can’t mate, who bite one another’s tails because they’re so confined, or who are so heavy their legs can no longer support their bodies; turkeys who can’t reproduce naturally; chickens who have to be debeaked because they peck at each other in densely packed cages; roosters bred for growth who’ve become so aggressive that they injure or kill their mates; and cows who eat other cows as part of their feed and go mad. All of this is presided over by stressed-out farmers, many of whom have come to accept the industry’s bigger-is-better mantra, though it’s clearly unsustainable for them and the earth. In the process they have become almost as trapped as the animals they “farm.” Farmers, industry, and consumers have created a treadmill that runs ever more rapidly, fueled by all kinds of suffering animals—including us. It’s a system that only takes and doesn’t give back; it extracts and doesn’t replenish, until the creatures and the earth that sustain its existence have nothing more to give.

Animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified. Every year 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk; undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals who are kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain, though they are fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. Cows exploited in the dairy industry, because they are older and their bodies have been exhausted by perpetual pregnancy, birthing, and milking, are among the most pathetic when they arrive at slaughter.

No set of numbers can tell the whole story, but when it comes to the annual slaughter of farmed animals, the numbers have such an oppressive weight that they can easily overwhelm the stories behind them: 69 billion chickens, 1.5 billion pigs, 656 million turkeys, 574 million sheep, 479 million goats and 302 million cows. In total, 72.5 billion farmed animals were killed for human consumption in 2018. Ten times the global human population, slaughtered every year. Nor does this number include the ducks, rabbits, horses, geese, kangaroos, bison and other land animals killed so that we can eat their meat, And what about the fishes?

Eventually she got around to asking about where I was living. They’d told her it was a farm, so she wanted to know how fun was that, were there animals to pet and such. Mind you, she never had one good thing to say about being raised in foster care herself, and now she thinks it’s all rainbows? I told her, Yeah, Mom, it’s exactly like a petting zoo where the main animals are roaches and mice. I told her for fun times we shoveled cow shit, and my foster was a creepy old man that threatened to file down my teeth. I didn’t mention I’d started doing drugs. As far as I was concerned, drugs were not the problem in that home. Just the opposite.

After I’d come to understand evolution and know a little about history and farming, I saw that the thick white animals I laughed at for following each other around and getting caught in bushes were the product of generations of farmers as much as generations of sheep; we made them, we moulded them from the wild, smart survivors that were their ancestors so that they would become docile, frightened, stupid, tasty wool-producers. We didn’t want them to be smart, and to some extent their aggression and their intelligence went together. Of course, the rams are brighter, but even they are demeaned by the idiotic females they have to associate with and inseminate. The same principle applies to chickens and cows and almost anything we’ve been able to get our greedy, hungry hands on for long enough. It occasionally occurs to me that something the same might have happened to women but, attractive though the theory might be, I suspect I’m wrong.

It’s hard to imagine calling the dairy industry anything but “inhumane” when you consider that on dairy farms, cows are artificially inseminated and forced to give birth, only to have their beloved babies torn away from them so the milk that nature intended for them can instead be consumed by humans. Both mother cows and their calves are emotionally traumatised when forcibly separated from one another. The mother cows bellow in desperation, and their calves bawl in distress. They cry out for each other for days – in vain. The male calves – often referred to as “by-products” – are either shot at birth or destined to become veal. The female calves, like their mothers, face a lifetime of repeated forcible impregnation and anguish over their stolen babies. Their bodies are strained to the limit in order to squeeze out every last drop of milk. Today, British cows typically produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally in order to feed their calves.

Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire? Our taboo against dog eating says something about dogs and a great deal about us. The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs. While written in a much different context, George Orwell's words (from Animal Farm) apply here: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature.

The dairy industry has its own ways of forcing animals to do its will. Cows, goats and sheep produce milk only after giving birth to calves, kids and lambs, and only as long as the youngsters are suckling. To continue a supply of animal milk, a farmer needs to have calves, kids or lambs for suckling, but must prevent them from monopolising the milk. One common method throughout history was to simply slaughter the calves and kids shortly after birth, milk the mother for all she was worth, and then get pregnant again. This is still a very widespread technique. In many modern dairy farms a milk cow usually lives for about five years before being slaughtered. During these five years she si almost constantly pregnant, and is fertilised within 60 to 120 days after giving birth in order to preserve maximum milk production. Her calves are separated from her shortly after birth. The females are reared to become the next generation of dairy cows, whereas the males are handed over to the care of the meat industry.

What Dr. Price's work teaches us is that the absolute fundamental requirement of healthy diets cannot be found in pasta, nor vegetable juices, nor oat bran, nor olive oil, but only in certain types of animal fats. These fats come from animals who consume green, growing organisms (such as grass and plankton), or who consume other animals that have consumed green, growing organisms (such as insects). What is tragic is the difficulty in finding such foods today. Most of our dairy cows spend their entire lives in confinement and never see green grass; chickens are kept in pens and fed mostly grains; pigs are raised in factories and never see sunlight; even fish are now raised in fish farms and given inappropriate feed, like soy pellets. Even worse, most people avoid these foods today because medical spokesmen claim they cause cancer, heart disease or weight gain, even though a number of highly qualified scientists have admirably refuted these charges. Suffice it to say that the patient who is afraid of consuming foods containing animal fats and cholesterol will make no headway in his efforts to improve his diet as these foods are absolutely vital for good health.

When you see that you're making other things feel good, it gives you a good feeling, too. The feeling inside sort of just happens, and you can't say this did it or that did it. It's the many little things. It doesn't seem that taking sweat-soaked harnesses off tired, hot horses would be something that would make you notice. Opening a barn door for the sheep standing out in a cold rain, or throwing a few grains of corn to the chickens are small things, but these little things begin to add up in you, and you can begin to understand that you're important. You may not be real important like people who do great things that you read about in the newspaper, but you begin to feel that you're important to all the life around you. Nobody else knows or cares too much about what you do, but if you get a good feeling inside about what you do, then it doesn't matter if nobody else knows. I do think about myself a lot when I'm alone way back on the place bringing in the cows or sitting on a mowing machine all day. But when I start thinking about how our animals and crops and fields and woods and gardens sort of all fit together, I then get that good feeling inside and don't worry much about what will happen to me.

The sex trade is also flourishing under the patriarchal objectification of women, paid for by men who are willing and able to own or rent a girl (or sometimes a woman) for sex. Those who are exploited are comparatively powerless, and cannot refuse sexual advances or deny the wishes of those who pay (someone else) for their services. In these situations and many others, men own and control the bodies of women as they own and control the bodies of sows and cows and hens. Sexual exploitation of human females for the benefit of males is mirrored in contemporary animal industries. Men who control animal industries exploit females for their reproductive abilities as if nonhuman animals were objects devoid of will and sensation. Sows are treated as if they were bacon factories and cows are treated as if they were milk machines. Sows, cows, hens, turkeys, and horses are artificially inseminated to bring profits to the men who control their bodies and their lives. Women in the sex trade are similar to factory farmed females . . . . Even comparatively privileged women in relatively fortunate marriages can readily be likened to sows and cows. . . . The reproductive abilities of women and other female animals are controlled and exploited by those in power (usually men) and both are devalued as they age and wear out—when they no longer reproduce. Cows, hens, and women are routinely treated as if they were objects to be manipulated in order to satisfy the desires of powerful men, without regard to female's wishes or feelings.

When I was first called as a General Authority, we lived on a very small plot of ground in Utah Valley that we called our farm. We had a cow and a horse and chickens and lots of children. One Saturday, I was to drive to the airport for a flight to a stake conference in California. But the cow was expecting a calf and in trouble. The calf was born, but the cow could not get up. We called the veterinarian, who soon came. He said the cow had swallowed a wire and would not live through the day. I copied the telephone number of the animal by-products company so my wife could call them to come and get the cow as soon as she died. Before I left, we had our family prayer. Our little boy said our prayer. After he had asked Heavenly Father to “bless Daddy in his travels and bless us all,” he then started an earnest plea. He said, “Heavenly Father, please bless Bossy cow so that she will get to be all right.” In California, I told of the incident and said, “He must learn that we do not get everything we pray for just that easily.” There was a lesson to be learned, but it was I who learned it, not my son. When I returned Sunday night, Bossy had “got to be all right.” This process is not reserved for the prophets alone. The gift of the Holy Ghost operates equally with men, women, and even little children. It is within this wondrous gift and power that the spiritual remedy to any problem can be found. “And now, he imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, not only men but women also. Now this is not all; little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned” (Alma 32:23).

Ironically, the same scientific disciplines which shape our milk machines and egg machines have lately demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that mammals and birds have a complex sensory and emotional make-up. They not only feel physical pain, but can also suffer from emotional distress. Evolutionary psychology maintains that the emotional and social needs of farm animals evolved in the wild, when they were essential for survival and reproduction. For example, a wild cow had to know how to form close relations with other cows and bulls, or else she could not survive and reproduce. In order to learn the necessary skills, evolution implanted in calves – as in the young of all other social mammals – a strong desire to play (playing is the mammalian way of learning social behaviour). And it implanted in them an even stronger desire to bond with their mothers, whose milk and care were essential for survival. What happens if farmers now take a young calf, separate her from her mother, put her in a closed cage, give her food, water and inoculations against diseases, and then, when she is old enough, inseminate her with bull sperm? From an objective perspective, this calf no longer needs either maternal bonding or playmates in order to survive and reproduce. But from a subjective perspective, the calf still feels a very strong urge to bond with her mother and to play with other calves. If these urges are not fulfilled, the calf suffers greatly. This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction. The tragedy of industrial agriculture is that it takes great care of the objective needs of animals, while neglecting their subjective needs.

Those who are willing to work for change, and make changes, too often do so only for the sake of their own liberation, without much thought to the oppression of others—especially other species. Feminists lobby against sex wage discrepancies, gays fight homophobic laws, and the physically challenged demand greater access—each fighting for injustices that affect their lives, and/or the lives of their loved ones. Yet these dedicated activists usually fail to make even a slight change in their consumer choices for the sake of other much more egregiously oppressed and exploited individuals. While it is important to fight for one’s own liberation, it is counterproductive (not to mention selfish and small minded) to fight for one’s own liberation while willfully continuing to oppress others who are yet lower on the rungs of hierarchy. While fighting for liberation, it makes no sense for feminists to trample on gays, for gays to trample on the physically challenged, or for the physically challenged to trample on feminists. It also makes no sense for any of these social justice activists to willfully exploit factory farmed animals. Can we not at least avoid exploiting and dominating others while working for our personal liberation? Those who seek greater justice—whatever their cause—must make choices that diminish the cruel exploitation of others. As a matter of consistency and solidarity, social justice activists must reject dairy products, eggs, and flesh. There is no other industry as cruel and oppressive as factory farming. With regard to numbers affected, extent and length of suffering, and numbers of premature deaths, no other industry can even approach factory farming. Billions of individuals are exploited from genetically engineered birth, through excruciating confinement, to conveyor belt dismemberment. Consequently, there is no industry more appropriate for social justice activists to boycott. Even if we aren’t prepared to take a public stand, or take on another cause, we must at least make a private commitment on behalf of cows, pigs, and hens by leaving animal products on the shelf at the grocery store.

Consider the life of a pregnant sow. Her incredible fertility is the source of her particular hell. While a cow will give birth to only a single calf at a time, the modern factory sow will birth, nurse, and raise an average of nearly nine piglets — a number that has been increased annually by industry breeders. She will invariably be kept pregnant as much as possible, which will prove to be the majority of her life. When she is approaching her due date, drugs to induce labor may be administered to make the timing more convenient for the farmer. After her piglets are weaned, a hormone injection makes the sow rapidly “cycle” so that she will be ready to be artificially inseminated again in only three weeks. Four out of five times a sow will spend the sixteen weeks of her pregnancy confined in a “gestation crate” so small that she will not be able to turn around. Her bone density will decrease because of the lack of movement. She will be given no bedding and often will develop quarter-sized, blackened, pus-filled sores from chafing in the crate. (In one undercover investigation in Nebraska, pregnant pigs with multiple open sores on their faces, heads, shoulders, backs, and legs — some as large as a fist — were videotaped. A worker at the farm commented, “They all have sores. . . . There’s hardly a pig in there who doesn’t have a sore.”) More serious and pervasive is the suffering caused by boredom and isolation and the thwarting of the sow’s powerful urge to prepare for her coming piglets. In nature, she would spend much of her time before giving birth foraging and ultimately would build a nest of grass, leaves, or straw. To avoid excessive weight gain and to further reduce feed costs, the crated sow will be feed restricted and often hungry. Pigs also have an inborn tendency to use separate areas for sleeping and defecating that is totally thwarted in confinement. The pregnant pigs, like most all pigs in industrial systems, must lie or step in their excrement to force it through the slatted floor. The industry defends such confinement by arguing that it helps control and manage animals better, but the system makes good welfare practices more difficult because lame and diseased animals are almost impossible to identify when no animals are allowed to move.

As for all of you who are worried about the hormones in milk and cruelty towards the calf, buy from small farms who look after their cows. And if we had been taught about farming and the basics of agriculture in school, then we would know that if the calf drinks all the milk that the cow produces, it could actually harm him. If you ever visit a farm and observe while a calf drinks off the mother, after a while the cow will push the calf away. This is simply to protect the calf. When it comes to a lactating cow, it’s always two udders for the calf and two for the farmer’s family; the kids will even drink it straight from the udders. This was, and is, a non-cruel, non-harming method for all involved. Indian and African communities knew a thing or two about sustainability long before the word was invented. The ‘untouched by hand’ milk comes from all four udders, so your ‘hygiene’ is coming at the cost of cruelty to the animal.

Of all the animals raised for food, broiler chickens, layer hens, and pigs are kept in the worst conditions by a considerable margin. The only quantitative estimates of farmed animal welfare I’ve been able to find come from Bailey Norwood, an economist and agricultural expert. He rated the welfare of different animals on a scale of –10 to 10, where negative numbers indicate that it would be better, from the animal’s perspective, to be dead rather than alive. He rates beef cattle at 6 and dairy cows at 4. In contrast his average rating for broiler chickens is –1, and for pigs and caged hens is –5. In other words, cows raised for food live better lives than chicken, hens, or pigs, which suffer terribly.

The revolution is led by pigs with a vision of an egalitarian utopia free from tyrannical human beings, but their ideals are gradually abandoned as power goes to their heads and they become cruel and greedy. They decree that only pigs are allowed to eat the apples grown in the orchard (nutritionally essential for a pig’s brain, they claim), and they breed a terror squad of dogs to police the hens, sheep, cows and horses living on the farm. As the pigs take on the luxuries of the humans they fought to overthrow—sleeping in the farmhouse and swilling whisky—the other animals die of overwork and starvation. Orwell had based Animal Farm on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Stalin’s fearsome drive to collectivize the Soviet Union’s farmland, resulting in the death of millions of peasants.

Consider a New York Times story from April 22, 2014, that reported: Something strange is happening at farms in upstate New York. The cows are milking themselves. Desperate for reliable labor and buoyed by soaring prices, dairy operations across the state are charging into a brave new world of udder care: robotic milkers … Robots allow the cows to set their own hours, lining up for automated milking five or six times a day—turning the predawn and late-afternoon sessions around which dairy farmers long built their lives into a thing of the past. With transponders around their necks, the cows get individualized service. Lasers scan and map their underbellies, and a computer charts each animal’s “milking speed,” a critical factor in a 24-hour-a-day operation. The

Although this major incident shows the dangers of feeding animals to other animals, it is often still considered an economically viable practice for industrial operations. Many feedlots in the United States, for instance, feed their cows chicken meat, while some companies even consider it “sustainable” to feed chicken to farmed fish.21

Conversely, animals can be quite sensitive to human music. There are stories of dogs who hide under the couch for piano works by atonal composers but not for those by, say, Mozart. One music teacher told me that her dog would heave an audible sigh of relief if she stopped playing complex, fast-moving pieces by Franz Liszt and proceeded to something calmer. And there are reports of cows that produce more milk listening to Beethoven (although, if this is true, shouldn't one hear more classical music on farms?). Birds listen as carefully to sounds as any musician. They have to, because they learn from each other. Many birds are not born with the song they sing: the symphonies they offer us for free in forests and meadows are cultural. White-crowned sparrows, for example, develop their normal song only when they have been exposed early in life to the sounds of an adult of their species. Many songbirds have dialects-differences in song structure from one population to another. One theory about this is that if a female can tell from a male's song that he is a local boy, she may prefer him as a mate, as he may be genetically adapted to regional conditions. Given the variability in song from location to location it is hard to maintain that birdsong is instinctive in the usual sense. There is room for creativity and modification. Some individuals act as star performers, setting new trends in their region.

But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep — and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word — Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime, Hearken to my joyful tidings Of the golden future time. Soon or late the day is coming, Tyrant Man shall be o’erthrown, And the fruitful fields of England Shall be trod by beasts alone. Rings shall vanish from our noses, And the harness from our back, Bit and spur shall rust forever, Cruel whips no more shall crack. Riches more than mind can picture, Wheat and barley, oats and hay, Clover, beans, and mangel-wurzels Shall be ours upon that day. Bright will shine the fields of England, Purer shall its waters be, Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes On the day that sets us free. For that day we all must labour, Though we die before it break; Cows and horses, geese and turkeys, All must toil for freedom’s sake. Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime, Hearken well and spread my tidings Of the golden future time.

A cow is an Earth-dwelling animal, a domesticated and multipurpose ungulate, which humans treat as a one-stop shop for food, liquid refreshment, fertiliser and designer footwear. The humans farm it and cut its throat and then cut it up and package it and refrigerate it and sell it and cook it. By doing this, apparently they have earned the right to change its name to beef, which is the monosyllable furthest away from cow, because the last thing a human wants to think about when eating cow is an actual cow.

Oh pshaw, Freddy,” said the cow, “you know perfectly well that you can’t shadow anybody unless you hide from them, and an animal as big as I am can’t hide behind one or two little spears of grass the way a cat or a dog can. And besides, you said yourself that an animal couldn’t be a good defective without a lot of practice. What else could I do?” “Why, you’ll just have to give up being a detective, that’s all,” replied the pig. “At least that kind of detective. Because there’s lots to detective work besides shadowing. You have to hunt for clues, too, and then think about them until you can figure out what they mean.” Mrs. Wiggins sighed heavily. “Oh dear!” she said. “You know thinking isn’t my strong point, Freddy. I mean, I’ve got good brains, but they aren’t the kind that think easily. They’re the kind of brains that if you let ’em go their own way, they are as good as anybody’s, but if you try to make them do anything, like a puzzle, they just won’t work at all.” “Well,” said Freddy, “detective work is a good deal like a puzzle. But I do think you ought not to try to do this shadowing. Mr. Bean certainly won’t like having the corn spoiled this way, and he’s been pretty touchy lately anyway. Not that I blame him, now that all the animals have started to play detective all over the farm. I heard him tell Mrs. Bean that he was getting sick and tired of having about fifteen animals sneaking along behind him every time he leaves the house. And whenever he looks up from his work, he says, no matter where he is, there are eyes peering at him—dozens and dozens of eyes watching him from hiding-places.

Children should have as much exposure as possible to animals. In all animals, including domestic, farm, and wild, are entire curricula. There are biology, sociology, genetics, economics, history, cultures, communication, language, hierarchies, governance, relationships sweeping story arcs, morality, even nutrition, just to name a few. Animals are the perfect microcosms. They are life. But it doesn’t count if the animals are just images or characters in a book. A poster of a kitten clinging to a branch with the words “Hang in there!” doesn’t count either. There is no greater example of the “flattening of content” that classes achieve than a “unit study” that examines, even purports to love, animals but does not actually engage any on a regular basis. Worse still, the more removed a culture is from animals, the more stylized and inaccurately the animals are inevitably represented. Tribes in Africa portray hippos as the deadly, fierce creatures they are. By the time most schoolchildren see them in the United States, they have morphed into “Mr. Hippo gets in his car to drive to work,” complete with his bright pink skin and marshmallow-shaped teeth. Dogs and cats, chickens and cows, songbirds and frogs are all there, waiting to be engaged. They have so much to teach us that any attempt to segregate environments of learning from them should never be accepted. In

How to Tell the Truth and Get in Trouble I am a fourth-generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher. I grew up on a dairy farm in Montana, and I ran a feedlot operation there for twenty years. I know firsthand how cattle are raised and how meat is produced in this country. Today I am president of the International Vegetarian Union. Sure, I used to enjoy my steaks as much as the next guy. But if you knew what I know about what goes into them and what they can do to you, you’d probably be a vegetarian like me. And, believe it or not, as a pure vegetarian now who consumes no animal products at all, I can tell you that these days I enjoy eating more than ever. If you’re a meat-eater in America, you have a right to know that you have something in common with most of the cows you’ve eaten. They’ve eaten meat, too.

The only quantitative estimates of farmed animal welfare I’ve been able to find come from Bailey Norwood, an economist and agricultural expert. He rated the welfare of different animals on a scale of –10 to 10, where negative numbers indicate that it would be better, from the animal’s perspective, to be dead rather than alive. He rates beef cattle at 6 and dairy cows at 4. In contrast his average rating for broiler chickens is –1, and for pigs and caged hens is –5. In other words, cows raised for food live better lives than chicken, hens, or pigs, which suffer terribly.

The unfortunate animals raised for food are forced to eat large quantities of fish meal and rendered animal flesh and organs, which is totally unnatural for them, in order to fatten them quickly. Manure is also used to “enrich” their feed, and these additives concentrate toxins to an even higher extent than the plant foods the animals are fed. The toxins in the animal foods we eat include carcinogenic heavy metals, deadly PCBs, chemical residues, antibiotics, and the human-created nightmare we now call the prion. Prions are thought to cause mad cow disease and the other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that have raged through both human cannibal populations (such as the cannibalistic Fore people of Papua New Guinea where a type of human spongiform encephalopathy, called by them “kuru,” was first documented in the 1950s) and animal cannibal populations (such as the farmed sheep and mink populations that developed scrapie and transmissible mink encephalopathy after being fed rendered animal flesh). Similar diseases such as Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (the human equivalent of mad cow) and, according to some researchers, certain forms of Alzheimer’s disease, now threaten human omnivore populations as well because of perverse industry standards that have dictated feeding cows to other cows, and that still feed pigs to other pigs, chickens to other chickens, and pigs and chickens to cows.30

Birds gotta fly, and cow’s gotta shit, Orla.  On a farm, it’s as natural as breathing for these animals,” Jethro returned with an unconcerned shrug. Staring at the cow in horror, Orla shuddered.  “Well, that was just plain rude!” she declared, feeling mildly traumatized… possibly more from the smell than the actual act itself. “I’ll register your complaint with the head heifer in charge. 

Meat from grass-fed and pasture-raised animals tends to be more nutrient-dense than conventional meat. Although the exact nutrient content will vary from species to species and from farm to farm (and by time of year and the quality of supplemental feed, if any), grass-fed and pasture-raised meat tends to be higher (sometimes much higher) in many minerals and vitamins while also having a better omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio. For example, grass-fed beef contains up to ten times more beta-carotene (a carotenoid—that is, an antioxidant and precursor of vitamin A; see here) as grain-fed beef and up to four times more vitamin E (see here). Grass-fed beef is also higher in B vitamins, zinc, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. And because pasture-raised animals hang out in the sun, their fat is a source of vitamin D (which is practically nonexistent in factory-farmed animals). Free-range chickens also have more vitamin E content and iron than conventional chickens. Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat tends to have a much lower water content than conventional meat and is much leaner overall (which means it has more protein!). Plus, its fats are much healthier. Grass-fed meat contains approximately four times more omega-3 fatty acids (in the very useful DHA and EPA forms; see here) as compared with grain-fed meat. It also contains far fewer omega-6 fatty acids, so the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in grass-fed meat is typically within the optimal range at 3:1 (but can be as low as 4:1 and as high as 20:1 in grain-fed meat, varying by the exact diet of the cow but also the cut of meat). Meat (and dairy) from grass-fed cows is the best-known source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; see here). Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat also tends to be higher in oleic acid (see here). What About Bacon?

In order to raise food animals under the stressful conditions of modern factory farming, American cows and pigs are full of hormones like diethyl stilbestrol (DES) (a growth simulator), pesticides that are used on animal feed, and antibiotics. Massive doses of antibiotics are needed because animals are stressed in conditions of overcrowding, with no sunshine and no fresh air. This causes illness, which is treated by massive doses of antibiotics.

Goats. This was once thought to be an antidote for North Korea’s economic ills. The terrain in the northern portion of the peninsula is mountainous and not suitable for farming. There are no green plots of grass for grazing cows, and therefore no source of dairy products or meat. So, in 1996, the North Koreans started a campaign to breed goats. These mountain animals are a good source of milk and meat; moreover, they feed on the shrubs tucked away high in the rocky terrain. The goat-breeding campaign led to a doubling of the goat population almost overnight, and tripled it within two years. This solved a short-term problem, but it had long-term consequences that were more destructive. The goats completely denuded the areas they inhabited, chewing up every single shrub in sight. This then had the effect of removing the last line of the land’s defense against the annual massive rains. The result? Annual monsoons led to deluges of biblical proportions, which wiped out the little remaining arable land and flooded the coal mines that were a source of energy. This only worsened the chronic food and energy shortages.

Even if you think you’re eating a super-healthy diet of grilled chicken breast, egg whites, “fresh” (but farm-raised) salmon, and nonfat Greek yogurt, your brain is being undermined by the invisible changes in your food supply. Just a few generations ago, almost all farms were family owned and operated. They’re now predominantly gigantic factory farms that pump their cows and chickens full of cheap feed that doesn’t just change the animals’ health—it changes yours as well. Environmental pollutants like mercury and BPAs can also affect the health of our brains, and fundamental changes in our lifestyle and environment play a vital role as well.

A cow is an Earth-dwelling animal, a domesticated and multipurpose ungulate, which humans treat as a one-stop shop for food, liquid refreshment, fertilizer, and designer footwear. The humans farm it and cut its throat and then cut it up and package it and refrigerate it and sell it and cook it. By doing this, apparently they have earned the right to change its name to “beef,” which is the monosyllable furthest away from “cow,” because the last thing a human wants to think about when eating cow is an actual cow.

Suddenly, early in the spring, an alarming thing was discovered. Snowball was secretly frequenting the farm by night! The animals were so disturbed that they could hardly sleep in their stalls. Every night, it was said, he came creeping in under cover of darkness and performed all kinds of mischief. He stole the corn, he upset the milk-pails, he broke the eggs, he trampled the seedbeds, he gnawed the bark off the fruit trees. Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal. The cows declared unanimously that Snowball crept into their stalls and milked them in their sleep. The rats, which had been troublesome that winter, were also said to be in league with Snowball.

A cow is an Earth-dwelling animal, a domesticated and multipurpose ungulate, which humans treat as a one-stop shop for food, liquid refreshment, fertilizer, and designer footwear. The humans farm it and cut its throat and then cut it up and package it and refrigerate it and sell it and cook it.

If the world’s 1 billion cows were a country, they’d rank third in greenhouse gases after China and the United States. Accounting for nearly two thirds of total livestock emissions, beef and dairy cattle dwarf the climate threat from all other farm animals combined, including pigs, chickens, lambs, goats, and ducks.

Snowball also busied himself with organising the other animals into what he called Animal Committees. He was indefatigable at this. He formed the Egg Production Committee for the hens, the Clean Tails League for the cows, the Wild Comrades’ Re-education Committee (the object of this was to tame the rats and rabbits), the Whiter Wool Movement for the sheep, and various others, besides instituting classes in reading and writing. On the whole, these projects were a failure.

Cows stink. So do goats and other animals that live on a farm. Old McDonald should have gone with fish. They are much less maintenance.

We have two dogs, Mabel and Wolf, and three cats at home, Charlie, George and Chairman. We have two cats on our farm, Tom and Little Sister, two horses, and two mini horses, Hannah and Tricky. We also have two cows, Holy and Madonna. And those are only the animals we let sleep in our bed.” - Ellen DeGeneres

midday on Sunday. The men had milked the cows in the early morning and then had gone out rabbiting, without bothering to feed the animals. When Mr. Jones got back he immediately went to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the World over his face, so that when evening came, the animals were still unfed. At last they could stand it no longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins. It was just then that Mr. Jones woke up. The next moment he and his four men were in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out in all directions. This was more than the hungry animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides. The situation was quite out of their control. They had never seen animals behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them almost out of their wits. After only a moment or two they gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels. A minute later all five of them were in full flight down the cart-track that led to the main road, with the animals pursuing them in triumph. Mrs. Jones looked out of the bedroom window, saw what was happening, hurriedly flung a few possessions into a carpet bag, and slipped out of the farm by another way. Moses sprang off his perch and flapped after her, croaking loudly. Meanwhile the animals had chased Jones and his men out on to the road and slammed the five-barred gate behind them. And so, almost before they knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been successfully carried through: Jones was expelled, and the Manor Farm was theirs.

STYLE & STRUCTURE LANGUAGE Simple, clear; effectively creates the atmosphere of a world that, on the surface, is down-to-earth and unsophisticated, but that on a deeper level is complex and contains many conflicting forces. NARRATOR Invisible, third-person narrator who emphasizes the thoughts, feelings, and actions of animals. FABLE (Short tale that teaches a moral lesson, with animals as characters.) The animals act in accordance with their animal nature, but their ideas and emotions are those of human beings: Benjamin is skeptical about the chances of improving his lot and feels just as disillusioned about their new society as a human would; Clover, the gentle, patient elderly mare, reacts to tragic events with the compassionate tears of a human being. It is obvious that Orwell sympathizes with the plight of the animals, whether they are ruled by Jones or Napoleon. His treatment of animals makes them believable as individuals, not just as types. IRONY (Use of words to express a meaning opposite to the literal meaning.) Orwell sees the animals’ flaws as well as their positive qualities; treats circumstances of their lives with persuasive irony: the Rebellion occurs not merely because of a bloodthirsty desire for revenge on the animals’ part, but also because Jones has forgotten to feed them and they are desperately hungry. STRUCTURE Ten chapters. Rising action: First five chapters tell of the animals’ Rebellion. Crisis (turning point): Napoleon launches the surprise attack that drives Snowball into exile, thus eliminating a rival for the position of power. The novel’s second half tells how Napoleon firmly establishes his power by making clever use of propaganda and terrorist tactics. Several unexplained events are cleared up as the story develops: why Napoleon took puppies (he raises them as a police force); what happened to the cows’ milk (it is reserved exclusively for the pigs’ use); the reason for the pigs’ moving into farmhouse (they are secretly learning to acquire human habits); the strange negotiations with Foxwood and Pinchfield Farms (Napoleon attempts to deal with humans on terms advantageous to him).

Dashing by Maisie Aletha Smikle On my farm I keep a firearm The deer I charm And then disarm To feed my family venison And stay away from medicine Sheep so sweet We love to eat Young lambs we chop To get lamb chops Pigs in wigs Dished their wigs to do a jig Pigs skinny dip Floated and strip So turkey chicken and rabbit May be covered with bacon strips Cows roaming in the valleys Cats left in the Alleys Bring the cows It's time to chow Beef for steak Make no mistake Mince it grind it chop it We must have it We plant dashene To cook and steam To feed the animals so they keep lean Fit and ready to consume Eat we must Or we'd be dust Knead the dough for the pie crust Get the pan it will not rust We will dine Without wine We will roast eat then toast Thanking God that He is our Host

There is no requirement that the cows, pigs, or hens who were exploited to create “natural” products be treated any different from how other factory farmed animals are treated. Farmed animals who are exploited for “natural” products are not allowed to live in natural conditions—they are not even allowed to satisfy their most basic natural behaviors.

Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals? A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals. Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals. Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to anymals. Conclusion : Th e world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries. It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering. Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries. Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries. If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents • to avoid purchasing products fr om industries that exploit anymals, and • to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries. Such industries include, but are not limited to, those that overtly sell or use products that include chicken’s reproductive eggs, cow’s nursing milk, or anymal flesh or hides (fur and leather), as well as industries that engage in or are linked with anymal experimentation of any kind, and entertainment industries such as zoos, circuses, and aquariums.

There is no requirement that the cows, pigs, or hens who were exploited to create “natural” products be treated any different from how other factory farmed animals are treated. Farmed animals who are exploited for “natural” products are not allowed to live in natural conditions—they are not even allowed to satisfy their most basic natural behaviors. Despite consumer assumptions about what “natural” means, . . . the USDA’s “natural” food labels only regulate “the presence of artificial additives and the degree of processing.” “Free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels are just as meaningless for farmed animals as are “all natural” labels. Just like farmed animals enslaved by organic industries, farmed animals exploited by “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” producers are routinely debeaked, disbudded, detoed, castrated, their tails are docked, and/or they are branded (depending on the species). Neither do “free range” and “certified humane” labels protect cows from perpetual impregnation, pregnancy, birth, calfsnatching, transport, or dismemberment (slaughter) at a very young age. Finally, “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels fail to help “spent” hens, who are sent to slaughter at the same youthful age.

There is no requirement that the cows, pigs, or hens who were exploited to create “natural” products be treated any different from how other factory farmed animals are treated. Farmed animals who are exploited for “natural” products are not allowed to live in natural conditions—they are not even allowed to satisfy their most basic natural behaviors.

Free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels are just as meaningless for farmed animals as are “all natural” labels. Just like farmed animals enslaved by organic industries, farmed animals exploited by “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” producers are routinely debeaked, disbudded, detoed, castrated, their tails are docked, and/or they are branded (depending on the species). Neither do “free range” and “certified humane” labels protect cows from perpetual impregnation, pregnancy, birth, calfsnatching, transport, or dismemberment (slaughter) at a very young age. Finally, “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels fail to help “spent” hens, who are sent to slaughter at the same youthful age.

For most women (as for most men) links between sexism and speciesism are not readily apparent. We have been conditioned not to see exploitation. For example, men generally have no idea how patriarchy affects women—unless they go out of their way to learn. The same is true for women with regard to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys. Both women and nonhuman animals have traditionally been viewed as property—"things” to be owned and controlled by those in power. While the plight of women is linked with that of nonhuman animals through a single system of oppression, through their comparative powerlessness and invisibility, and through sexual exploitation, it is important to elucidate these similarities through concrete examples. Links between women and nonhuman animals are nowhere more apparent than through the vulnerabilities of mothers and their young, and the control of pregnancies and offspring; this particular form of oppression is nowhere more blatant than on factory farms.

Not only do we harbor patriarchal indifference to uniquely female suffering, but additionally, most of us are ignorant of the horrible cruelty inherent in factory farming. It is easy to buy a bucket of chicken or a carton of vanilla yogurt without even knowing about the females whose sad lives lie behind these unnecessary products. It is easy to forget that mozzarella and cream come from a mother’s munificence—mothers who would have desperately preferred to tend their young, and to live out their lives with a measure of freedom and comfort—or not to be born at all. Most consumers are unaware of the ongoing, intense suffering and billions of premature deaths that lurk behind mayonnaise and cream, cold cuts and egg sandwiches. Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

Of the entire terrestrial vertebrate biomass on earth, wild animals constitute only about three percent, humans one-quarter, and livestock almost three-quarters! On old-fashioned farms, animals had names, pastures to graze in, mud to wallow in, or sand to dust-bathe in. Life was far from idyllic, but it was appreciably better than it is nowadays when we lock up calves and pigs in narrow crates of stainless steel, cram chickens by the thousands into sunless sheds, and don’t even let cows graze outside anymore. Instead, we keep them standing in their own waste. Since these animals are mostly kept out of sight, people rarely get to see their miserable conditions. All we see is cuts of meat without feet, heads, or tails attached. This way we don’t need to ponder the meat’s existence prior to packaging. And here I am not even talking about the fact that we eat animals, only about how we treat them, which is my main concern. I am too much of a biologist to question the natural circle of life. Every animal plays its role by eating or being eaten, and we are involved at both ends of the equation. Our ancestors were part of a vast ecosystem of carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, ingesting other organisms and also serving as meals for predators. Even if nowadays we rarely fall prey anymore, we still let hordes of critters devour our rotting corpses. It’s all dust to dust.

All human beings are systematically socialized to oppress cattle, chickens, snakes, mice, dogs, and all other nonhuman individuals. After the fashion of Sojouner Truth, might cows and chickens ask: “Ain’t I a female, too?” And would not dogs and snakes ask, "Ain't I a living being, too?

Oppressions are linked. We cannot free human beings without freeing cows, sows, and hens along with women and men who are systematically oppressed by those in power. Rather than seek to fight our way up the patriarchal ladder, those working for social justice need to dismantle hierarchies, and cease to exploit all those who are less powerful—even if we must give up a few culinary favorites in the process . . . . Each of us decides, over the course of our daily lives, whether we will ignore the suffering of nonhuman animals . . . . We choose where our money goes, and in the process, we choose whether to boycott cruelty and support change, or melt ambiguously back into the masses.

First, most beef is now raised in a feedlot and fed grain. Cows are ruminants that naturally eat grass. This change in their diet may change the character of the meat.18 Wild-animal meat is similar to grass-fed beef, but not to grain-fed beef. Feedlot cattle require large doses of antibiotics. Farm-raised fish also have little in common with wild fish. Farm-raised fish eat pellets that often contain grains and other cheap substitutes for a fish’s natural diet.

Fuck this,’ says Rachel to Elliot. ‘Let’s go. Let’s get out of this pathetic, windowless, dirty, small-town excuse for a gym, full of people who are extremely up themselves given that they are basically just cleaners with clipboards and absolutely no future.’ She has the lungs for this kind of sentence now, because she is not a fucking beginner. She looks at Jordon. ‘You think you’re so fucking important, because your arms are bigger than some other guy’s? But you don’t actually have a brain, so why would you matter to anybody? Have you ever read a book? No. All you are is flesh and muscle, like a farm animal. You’re basically livestock. You’ve devoted your life to being artificially bulked up, like a fucking cow, like a sodding battery hen. And you know what’s really sad? You could have chosen anything, and you chose that, to be like all the rest of the pathetic cattle.

Man is the lone animal that devours without delivering. He doesn't give milk, he doesn't lay eggs, he is too powerless to even consider pulling the furrow, he can't run quick enough to get bunnies. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of gallons of milk have you given during this last year? And what has happened to that milk which should have been breeding up sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our enemies. And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this last year, and how many of those eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest have all gone to market to bring in money for Jones and his men. And you, Clover, where are those four foals you bore, who should have been the support and pleasure of your old age? Each was sold at a year old−you will never see one of them again. In return for your four confinements and all your labour in the fields, what have you ever had except your bare rations and a stall?

the whole farm burst out into ‘Beasts of England’ in tremendous unison. The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it.

I can't drive past a farm without dreaming of having my own cow. My own goat, my own pig. If not a horse, maybe a pony or a donkey. In any case, though I've had several pets, I count not having had more animals in my life among my biggest regrets.