Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the conflict between ethical awareness and the meat industry, suggesting that a lack of consciousness is necessary for its survival.
John Robbins's quote critiques the meat industry by underscoring how awareness and conscience regarding the treatment of animals and the implications of consuming meat negatively impact business practices. It implies that to thrive in the meat business, owners must cultivate a state of denial to ignore the ethical dilemmas and suffering involved, pointing to a broader commentary on the necessity of moral awareness in societal practices.
In practice
In a discussion on animal rights, you might use this quote to illustrate the moral conflicts in industries that rely on animal suffering.
Our food chain is in crisis. Big agribusiness has made profits more important than your health—more important than the environment—more important than your right to know how your food is produced. But beneath the surface, a revolution is growing.
I believe that eating simple food in a healthy body with a clean conscience is more pleasurable, and infinitely more satisfying, then eating decadent food that makes you and your world ill.
The joy is that we can take back our bodies, reclaim our health, and restore ourselves to balance. We can take power over what and how we eat. We can rejuvenate and recharge ourselves, bringing healing to the wounds we carry inside us, and bringing to fuller life the wonderful person that each of us can be.
The level of consumption that we identify with success is utterly unsustainable. We're gobbling up the world.
Every time you make a choice that expresses respect for life, you bring a little more love in your body, into your family, into our society, and into a world that is calling out for this blessing.
A reduction in meat consumption is the most powerful single act that you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources.
Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
When my father was born, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. When I was born, it was Lithuania. When I left, it was Hungary. It is difficult to say where I come from.
We cannot go back in time and change the past, but we can repent. The Savior can wipe away our tears of regret and remove the burden of our sins. His Atonement allows us to leave the past behind and move forward with clean hands, a pure heart, and a determination to do better and especially to become better.
Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.
We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.
Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.
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