Animal Farmers Going Vegan: Moving Quotes from Former Animal Agriculture Workers

From slaughtering farmed animals to fighting for their rights, these former animal agriculture workers experienced a profound shift in perspective. As ‘family farmers,’ they once justified their cruel trade by shrouding its horrific reality in illusory rationalizations about ‘humanely raised animals’ and 'happy meat.' After coming to realize this narrative is deceptive and damaging, they were inspired to become part of the solution. Transforming their life’s work from perpetuating cruelty to promoting compassion— these vegan advocates now dedicate their time to creating meaningful change for farmed animals.

“Not, ‘Am I nice to my animals?’ or, ‘Do I feed them well?’ but, ‘My God, should we be eating them?'... That was a door of my soul that I had never opened before. And once I’d opened it, I could never close it again, because I knew what those animals looked like when they went onto the kill floor…There is always fear in their eyes. They know exactly what's going to happen. For anyone to claim there is such a thing as 'humane slaughter,' well, that's the greatest oxymoron in the world." –Howard Lyman (former cattle rancher)

“The screams of the mothers … I still hear the sound. It won’t go away. I keep thinking about it. I still live in a state of denial that I used to be a farmer. Now when I look at calves in the eyes, or look cows in the eyes…all the sorrow that I caused to them is forever engraved upon my heart. I have no idea how many mothers and babies I put on the trailer to send to slaughter. How many mothers were left without their babies. And they cried and called for their babies. If someone would touch my daughter or my son… I don’t know what to say, just the thought of it frightens me. When I worked on the farm, somehow, I saw no problem with it.” -Michelle (former dairy farmer)

“We stood at the gate listening to one of our baby goats being driven away [to slaughter], crying in the trunk of the car. It was at this horrific moment when we looked at each other with tears in our eyes. We have since left the dairy industry and converted our farm into a sanctuary…There is now a very clear distinction between humane and inhumane farming. Humane farming is cultivating a plant-based diet. Inhumane farming is breeding any sentient being for production and consumption.” –Cheri Ezell (former goat farmer)

“I realized they have familial bonds; they crave safety, experience joy and happiness. It is odd how we as humans have profound capabilities to avert their eyes from the obvious that is in plain sight.” –Harold Brown (former cattle rancher)

“After looking into thousands of pigs’ eyes, I’ve come to understand that they are never vacant, there’s always somebody looking back at me…As a pig farmer, I live an unethical life, shrouded in the justificatory trappings of social acceptance…Behind the shroud, I am a slaveholder and a murderer. Looking head on, you can’t see it. ‘Humanely’ raising and slaughtering pigs seems perfectly normal. In order to see the truth, you have to look askance. What I do is wrong, in spite of its acceptance by nearly 95% of the American population. I know it in my bones. Someday it must stop. Somehow, we need to become the sort of beings who don’t weave dark, damning shrouds to sustain, with acceptance and celebration, the grossly unethical. Deeper, much deeper, we have an obligation to eat otherwise.”-Bob Comis (former pig farmer)    

“Mothers were birthing outside my window and I was listening to their labor pains all night, and then watching them loving and cleaning their babies until my husband came with the tractor and cage to take those babies… You realize you’ve been blind to this holocaust going on all around you...Once you break through that barrier of social conditioning to eat meat, you wake up in a world of horror" -Jess Strathdee (former dairy farmer)

Learn more about adopting a cruelty-free diet here.