Ingrid Newkirk Quotes

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.

There's nothing humane about the flesh of animals who have had one or two or even three improvements made in their singularly rotten lives on today's factory farms.

I have a tough stomach, and I've put myself through a lot. But when I first found out what happens to animals on modern factory farms and in today's slaughterhouses, I wanted to throw up - I literally couldn't believe it.

Each year, billions of animals are subjected to cruelty on factory farms, feed lots, and slaughterhouses. The brutality that these animals endure would be grounds for felony cruelty charges if inflicted upon our cats and dogs.

The raccoons, foxes, beavers, chinchillas, minks, rabbits, and yes, sometimes even dogs and cats that are killed for fur are not very different from your beloved dog or cat. They all have eyes, ears and hearts. They all experience pain when they are physically maimed. They shake with fear when they experience terror.

The bust of Colonel Sanders stands as a monument to cruelty and has no place in the Kentucky state Capitol.

Foie gras is sold as an expensive delicacy in some restaurants and shops. But no one pays a higher price for foie gras than the ducks and geese who are abused and killed to make it.

I don't want any more concentration camps for animals that are cruelly treated, force-fed to fatten themselves up for our consumption.

As you may know, KFC is under worldwide pressure to eliminate its cruelest abuses of chickens, such as cutting the beaks off baby birds; breeding chickens to grow so large, so quickly that many suffer crippling injuries; and slitting the birds' throats or dropping them into tanks of scalding-hot water while they are still alive and able to feel pain.

Not only is fur cruel, it's also totally gross. I mean, who wants to wear the skin of an abused animal? Not me!

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals.

I drove through the stockyards of Texas on a motorcycle. It doesn't let you escape what surrounds you and what it smells like and feels like - and what hit me was the realization that something that was alive and had feelings will suffer before a piece of it is placed on our plates.

The attitude we have towards our personal pets as opposed to the animals that suffer under the factory farm is hypocritical and delusional.

Bulls can do nothing to demand justice. They can only defend themselves as best they can in a fight with a pre-determined ending and die never knowing why they were forced to endure such a painful and prolonged death. It's up to us, as a civilized society, to call for an end to the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting.

For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals, in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.

I am not saying that factory farming is the same as the Holocaust or the slave trade, but it's clear that there is an immense amount of suffering in it, and just as we think that the Nazis were wrong to ignore the suffering of their victims, so we are wrong to ignore the sufferings of our victims.

All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true, how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances, such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?

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

Factory farming, like comparable evils throughout history, depends for its existence upon concealment. It depends on people either not noticing or willfully averting their gaze.

There is no kind way to rip the skin off animals' backs. Anyone who wears any fur shares the blame for the torture and gruesome deaths of millions of animals each year.

It's commonly said that if slaughterhouses had clear glass walls, nobody would eat meat. I think people go out of their way to remain ignorant about how factory farm animals are treated.

Swine!

There is no meaningful distinction between eating flesh and eating dairy or other animal products. Animals exploited in the dairy industry live longer than those used for meat, but they are treated worse during their lives, and they end up in the same slaughterhouse after which we consume their flesh anyway. There is probably more suffering in a glass of milk or an ice cream cone than there is in a steak.

I have resigned from the human race. Look at the way we treat animals.