Photo by Clemson / Creative Commons.

“Carnism is the invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals. It’s essentially the opposite of veganism. […] [C]arnism is a dominant belief system or ideology. And so it’s entrenched. It’s woven through the very fabric of society. And it also becomes internalized, therefore shaping the very way we think and feel about eating animals. Or more accurately, the way we don’t think and feel about eating animals. […] [A]ll meat eating cultures tend to teach people to desensitize themselves to select species that that culture has deemed to be edible. All the other species we seem to naturally find disgusting and often offensive to consume. So we really learn how not to feel disgusted and empathetic toward animals, the ones we’ve been taught to classify as edible.”

— Dr. Melanie Joy

Listen to the rest of the interview with Dr. Joy at Our Hen House, available here (the podcast also features interviews with Rachel Winard, Charles Siebert, Donny Moss, and Noah Gittell).