The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.

If they [animals] were really to get the equal consideration that I believe they should, we wouldn't have commercial animal production in this country.

If you're buying animal products and can go to the farm and actually see how the animals are looked after, yes, that's an important point. That's definitely the best way of assuring yourself that the animals are being well treated.

Sometimes animals may suffer more because of their more limited understanding. If, for instance, we are taking prisoners in wartime we can explain to them that although they must submit to capture, search, and confinement, they will not otherwise be harmed and will be set free at the conclusion of hostilities. If we capture wild animals, however, we cannot explain that we are not threatening their lives. A wild animal cannot distinguish an attempt to overpower and confine from an attempt to kill; the one causes as much terror as the other.

I don't understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It's a pretty gross interference with nature.

Grain that is used to feed animals that end up on our tables as turkeys and hams could have gone to feed starving people.

What is there about the notion of a person, at law, that makes every living member of the species Homo sapiens a person, irrespective of their mental capacities, but excludes every nonhuman animal - again, irrespective of their mental capacities?