This is the body's nurse; but since man's witFound the art of cookery, to delight his sense,More bodies are consumed and kill'd with itThan with the sword, famine, or pestilence.

All vegans and vegetarians have heard it: “But what about the plants? What about their feelings? They feel pain, too. Don’t you feel bad for the carrots? You are killing them, you know.”Sorry, but the above represent the dumbest set of excuses I’ve ever heard as to why some people claim eating animals is morally equivalent to eating plants. Tellingly, these people’s concern for plant feelings has not reared its head over eating a baked potato with steak, or seeing capers in chicken piccata. No, it’s arisen because the conversation has turned to cruelty toward the animals we eat, something that’s difficult to swallow.

Meat may taste good, but the guilt of eating it tastes far worse.

I am very proud of the fact that 20 years [sic] on people tell me they became a vegetarian as a result of 'Meat is Murder'. I think that is quite literally rock music changing someone's life - it's certainly changing the life of animals. It is one of the things I am most proud of.

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.

Morally it may be better to not kill any creature for their flesh, but biologically, meat was one of the greatest factors involved in the rise of the psychology of thinking humanity.