The dreadful situation of the brute creation, particularly of those which have been domesticated, claims our strictest attention.
Lewis Gompertz (1779-1865)

Capitalist [agricultural] production prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man [sic] in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil [sic]. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer.
Karl Marx (1818-1883)

...all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a process in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil...Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology...only by sapping the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the laborer
Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The major cruelties practised on animals in civilized countries today arise out of commercial exploitation, and the fear of losing profits is the chief obstacle to reform.
C.W.Hume (1886-1981)

One of the remarks made by farmers at their public discussion of these problems suggest that they are rapidly ceasing to think of animals as sentient beings at all. If you handle vast numbers of creatures which are in any case going to die soon, it is, I suppose, easy to get into a state of mind in which they seem to be merely machines.
Kingsley Martin (1897-1969)

As cruel a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

Family organisation is broken and young animals are increasingly being denied a mother to turn to for comfort and for grooming. One of the saddest and most pathetic of farm practices - inevitable at the present time for the supply of dairy produce - is the separation of the calf from the cow at birth or soon after.
Ruth Harrison (1920- )

The fate of ther cow and her calf must diminsih us. We are too proud, too arrogant, and too cruel. We shrink too easily from emotion and resort all too sparingly - as if it were a sign of decadence - to the language of kindness and mercy. We indulge our cleverness and convenience ignobly. We have the wit and resource to become friendlier denizens of this world.
Alan Long PhD (1925- )

No one really needs a mink coat in this world ... except minks.
Glenda Jackson (1936- )

Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics. We plow under habitats of other animals to grow hybrid corn that fattens our genetically engineered animals for slaughter. We make free species extinct and domesticate species into biomachines. We build cruelty into our diet.
Jim Mason (1950- )