The question is, if we don’t say no to this, what do we say no to? If we don’t say no to something that systematically abuses 50 billion animals, if we don’t say no to the number one cause of global warming, and not by a little bit, but by a lot, if we don’t say no to what the UN has said is one of the top two or three causes of every significant environmental problem in the world, locally and globally, if we don’t say no to something that is clearly—not clear to me, but clear to the World Health Organization—a prime factor in the generation of avian and swine flus, if we don’t say no to something that’s making our antibiotics less effective and ineffective, if we don’t say no to something that causes 76 million cases of food-bourne illness every year, just what do we say no to? This is not a case where we need to go to war with another country or spend a trillion dollars or elect a new government. We just need to say no to it

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. 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.