Every source.
All 90 of them, linked to the original wherever a link exists. Generated from the same records the chapters cite, so it cannot fall out of step with them.
Every Hebrew quotation below that links to Sefaria was checked, word for word, against Sefaria's own text — most recently on September 28, 2026. The result is printed under each checked quotation, and the few that cannot be machine-checked say so.
Positions attributed to named people are theirs; classical sources are cited for study in the original. If you find an error in a citation, even a wrong page number or vowel mark, send it in and it will be fixed with thanks. Getting the sources right is the whole point.
To learn from them rather than look one up, the same texts are set out in the order the chapters reach them on the source sheet, which is built to be printed and carried. To hear it taught, the filmed talks the chapters draw on are on one page of their own.
✓ Sefaria-checked: the Hebrew was compared with Sefaria's text, word for word, on 2026-09-28. Anything else is said on the entry.
All 90 sources.
The Hebrew Bible
בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
"in the image of God He created him", said of the human being and of no other creature. The verse the hierarchy rests on, and the reason this site does not hold that animals and people are equal.
וּרְדוּ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
and have dominion, the grant of rule over the animals, the verse the 'dominion' argument leans on
Humanity's first diet, containing no animals.
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
living soul, the term the Torah uses for animals
יִשְׁרְצוּ הַמַּיִם שֶׁרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה... וְאֵת כׇּל־נֶפֶשׁ הַחַיָּה הָרֹמֶשֶׂת אֲשֶׁר שָׁרְצוּ הַמַּיִם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Let the waters swarm with living souls... and God created every living soul that swarms in the waters. The Torah's word for a fish is nefesh chayah, the same phrase it uses for you.
The post-Flood permission, granted to a diminished humanity.
The command to unload a suffering animal, even your enemy's: the derivation of tza'ar ba'alei chayim.
אִישׁ אִישׁ מִבֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁחַט שׁוֹר אוֹ־כֶשֶׂב אוֹ־עֵז בַּמַּחֲנֶה אוֹ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁחַט מִחוּץ לַמַּחֲנֶה וְאֶל־פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֹא הֱבִיאוֹ לְהַקְרִיב קׇרְבָּן לַה׳ לִפְנֵי מִשְׁכַּן ה׳ דָּם יֵחָשֵׁב לָאִישׁ הַהוּא דָּם שָׁפָךְ וְנִכְרַת הָאִישׁ הַהוּא מִקֶּרֶב עַמּוֹ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Any man of the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or a sheep or a goat in the camp, or who slaughters outside the camp, and does not bring it to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting to offer it as an offering to Hashem before the Tabernacle of Hashem, it shall be counted as blood for that man; he has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.
The step between the Flood and Devarim that most people are never shown: in the wilderness, an animal slaughtered anywhere but the altar is described in the Torah's own words for bloodshed: he has shed blood. Whether that is the plain sense is disputed by the Sages of the Mishnah (Chullin 16b–17a). R. Yishmael says that ordinary meat, בְּשַׂר תַּאֲוָה, was forbidden in the wilderness and first permitted by Devarim 12:20; R. Akiva says it was never forbidden and that this verse speaks of consecrated animals. Rashi here follows R. Akiva: 'the verse speaks of consecrated animals.' The Ramban (on 17:2) calls R. Yishmael's reading 'the fitting one, on the plain sense of the text,' and the Rambam codifies it (Hilchot Shechita 4:17): in the wilderness, whoever wished to slaughter could slaughter only a peace-offering. The page prints the verse as a stage, with the dispute visible, and rests nothing on which side is right.
שׁוֹר אוֹ־כֶשֶׂב אוֹ־עֵז כִּי יִוָּלֵד וְהָיָה שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תַּחַת אִמּוֹ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
An ox or a sheep or a goat, when it is born, shall stay seven days under its mother.
The verse fixes when a newborn may be brought as an offering, the eighth day and after; it is not a law of husbandry, and this site does not read it as a ban on taking a calf from a cow. Asa Keisar's sefer does, and that reading is not repeated here. What stands without any reading is the number: the Torah will not have a calf at the altar before he has had a week with his mother, and the dairy takes him within a day (EFSA, calves (2023)).
וְהָאסַפְסֻף אֲשֶׁר בְּקִרְבּוֹ הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה וַיָּשֻׁבוּ וַיִּבְכּוּ גַּם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֹּאמְרוּ מִי יַאֲכִלֵנוּ בָּשָׂר
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And the rabble among them craved a craving; and the children of Israel wept again too, and said: who will feed us meat?
הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה, craved a craving. The doubled verb has no object at first; the food is named only at the end. It starts in the hangers-on among them and spreads to Israel: in this story the wanting is catching. The next verses supply the setting the story turns on: manna, every morning, already falling.
עַד אֲשֶׁר־יֵצֵא מֵאַפְּכֶם וְהָיָה לָכֶם לְזָרָא יַעַן כִּי־מְאַסְתֶּם אֶת־ה׳ אֲשֶׁר בְּקִרְבְּכֶם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
...until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected Hashem who is among you.
God granting the meat, not refusing it: a month of what was demanded, until the wanting is gone. לְזָרָא appears nowhere else in Tanach. And with the need already met by manna, the verse calls the complaint that went with the craving, the weeping to go back to Egypt, מְאַסְתֶּם: a rejection of the One who was doing the feeding.
הַבָּשָׂר עוֹדֶנּוּ בֵּין שִׁנֵּיהֶם טֶרֶם יִכָּרֵת וְאַף ה׳ חָרָה בָעָם וַיַּךְ ה׳ בָּעָם מַכָּה רַבָּה מְאֹד וַיִּקְרָא אֶת־שֵׁם־הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא קִבְרוֹת הַתַּאֲוָה כִּי־שָׁם קָבְרוּ אֶת־הָעָם הַמִּתְאַוִּים
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
The meat was still between their teeth, not yet chewed, when the anger of Hashem flared against the people, and Hashem struck the people a very great blow. And he named that place Kivrot HaTaavah, Graves of the Craving, for there they buried the people who craved.
Not a punishment for eating meat, which the Torah permits and this site does not dispute; the camp was fed, and the place is named for the craving, not for the food. What the story judges is appetite that keeps demanding after the need is met.
וַאֲנִי לֹא אָחוּס עַל־נִינְוֵה הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה... וּבְהֵמָה רַבָּה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city... and much cattle?
The last words of the book. God's closing argument for sparing a city ends by counting the animals in it. Read on Yom Kippur afternoon, every year, by every congregation that keeps the day.
קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
You shall be holy, for I, Hashem your God, am holy.
יְדֵיכֶם דָּמִים מָלֵאוּ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Your hands are full of blood.
The close of the passage that opens with 'why do I need your many sacrifices' (Yeshayahu 1:11). Said to people at worship, not to butchers: the offering was brought by hands the prophet calls full of blood, and the altar did not clean them. The site reads it the way it reads 1:11, as a warning about what worship does not wash, not as a repeal of the sacrificial law.
וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל וְיָרֵאתָ מֵּאֱלֹהֶיךָ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God.
כִּי־תְאַוֶּה נַפְשְׁךָ לֶאֱכֹל בָּשָׂר... בְּכׇל־אַוַּת נַפְשְׁךָ תֹּאכַל בָּשָׂר
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
When your soul craves to eat meat... according to the craving of your soul you may eat meat.
The Sages' term for ordinary meat is “meat of craving.” The verse permits it for craving.
לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
God placed the human in the garden 'to work it and to guard it'. The mandate is not only to use the world but to keep it.
יוֹדֵעַ צַדִּיק נֶפֶשׁ בְּהֶמְתּוֹ וְרַחֲמֵי רְשָׁעִים אַכְזָרִי
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
The righteous one knows the soul of his animal; the mercies of the wicked are cruelty.
וְגָר זְאֵב עִם־כֶּבֶשׂ... לֹא־יָרֵעוּ וְלֹא־יַשְׁחִיתוּ בְּכׇל־הַר קׇדְשִׁי כִּי־מָלְאָה הָאָרֶץ דֵּעָה אֶת־ה׳
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb... they shall not hurt nor destroy on all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Hashem.
וְכָרַתִּי לָהֶם בְּרִית בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא עִם־חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה וְעִם־עוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וְרֶמֶשׂ הָאֲדָמָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And on that day I will make a covenant for them with the beast of the field, and with the bird of the sky, and the creeping things of the ground.
A covenant is a two-sided thing made with someone. The verse continues by breaking the bow and the sword out of the land. The covenant with the animals and the end of war arrive in the same sentence.
וְרַחֲמָיו עַל־כׇּל־מַעֲשָׂיו
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
His mercy is upon all His works.
Recited three times a day, every day, in Ashrei.
פּוֹתֵחַ אֶת־יָדֶךָ וּמַשְׂבִּיעַ לְכׇל־חַי רָצוֹן
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
You open Your hand and satisfy every living thing with favour.
The pe verse of Ashrei, which is itself an alphabetical acrostic, said three times a day. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 51:7) rules that it is the one verse of Ashrei a person must say with full attention, and must say again if they did not. Every living thing means every creature, not only people. It describes God feeding the world; it is quoted for its first letter and for whom it names, not as a proof. It stands at the head of the peshat level.
רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת־הָרָע
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
See, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil.
The plain sense is the covenant's choice, between keeping the Torah and leaving it. It stands at the head of the remez level for its first word, see, and for the choice it puts in front of the reader, not as a verse about animals.
דִּרְשׁוּ ה׳ בְּהִמָּצְאוֹ קְרָאֻהוּ בִּהְיוֹתוֹ קָרוֹב
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.
Its first word, dirshu, seek, has the same root as derash. The plain sense is a call to return while return is still open; the next verse goes on, let the wicked forsake his way. It stands at the head of the derash level, not as a verse about animals.
סוֹד ה׳ לִירֵאָיו וּבְרִיתוֹ לְהוֹדִיעָם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and His covenant, to make it known to them.
Its first word is sod. Tehillim 25 is itself an alphabetical acrostic, and this is its samekh verse. The covenant it names is the Torah's; the site does not read it as the covenant with the beasts of the field in Hoshea 2:20. It stands at the head of the sod level.
The Babylonian Talmud
סוֹף אָדָם לָמוּת וְסוֹף בְּהֵמָה לִשְׁחִיטָה, וְהַכֹּל לְמִיתָה הֵם עוֹמְדִים. אַשְׁרֵי מִי שֶׁגָּדֵל בַּתּוֹרָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
The end of a person is to die, and the end of an animal is to be slaughtered, and all stand ready for death. Happy is the one who grew up in Torah.
R. Yochanan said it whenever he finished the book of Iyov, and read whole it is a line about mortality, not about menus: everything dies, so what matters is the name you leave. The half that gets quoted at dinner tables, 'an animal's end is slaughter', is a description of what happens to animals in a world where people slaughter them. It is not a statement of what they are for, and the Talmud never uses it as one.
נֵר בֵּיתוֹ וְנֵר חֲנוּכָּה — נֵר בֵּיתוֹ עָדִיף, מִשּׁוּם שְׁלוֹם בֵּיתוֹ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
His household lamp against the Chanukah lamp, the household lamp takes precedence, because of the peace of his home.
Rava, and the next line says the same against kiddush. Shalom bayit is not a soft consideration the halacha nods at; here it outranks the Chanukah lamp and kiddush in a straight contest. Cited here for its weight, not as a ruling on anyone's kitchen. Nothing here decides which household conflicts it covers, which is the question to bring to a rav.
Tza'ar ba'alei chayim overrides rabbinic prohibitions on Shabbat.
Pikuach nefesh, saving a human life, sets aside Shabbat, and Torah-level prohibitions with it. Read from "and he shall live by them": live by them, and not die by them.
Placed beside Shabbat 128b deliberately. Tza'ar ba'alei chayim is weighty enough to push aside a rabbinic prohibition on Shabbat; a human life pushes aside the Torah's own. The gap between those two is the tradition's own measure of the difference between a person and an animal, which is why this site can hold the difference and still make its argument.
כׇּל הַמְרַחֵם עַל הַבְּרִיּוֹת — מְרַחֲמִין עָלָיו מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Whoever shows mercy to creatures is shown mercy from Heaven.
The word is בְּרִיּוֹת, creatures, not people. R. Gamliel b. Rebbi says it as a rule with two directions, and the site quotes only the first; the second half says the reverse about one who does not.
בִּזְמַן שֶׁבֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ קַיָּים אֵין שִׂמְחָה אֶלָּא בְּבָשָׂר... וְעַכְשָׁיו שֶׁאֵין בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ קַיָּים אֵין שִׂמְחָה אֶלָּא בְּיַיִן
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
R. Yehuda ben Beteira: when the Temple stood, there is no joy except with meat, the shelamim offering, 'you shall slaughter peace-offerings and eat there and rejoice' (Devarim 27:7); and now that the Temple does not stand, there is no joy except with wine, 'wine gladdens the heart of man' (Tehillim 104:15).
יוֹתֵר מִמַּה שֶּׁהָעֵגֶל רוֹצֶה לִינַק פָּרָה רוֹצָה לְהָנִיק
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
More than the calf wants to suckle, the cow wants to nurse.
R. Akiva to R. Shimon bar Yochai, in prison, explaining why he wants to teach even more than his student wants to learn. It is an image for teaching, and it works as one only because everyone who heard it knew it was true of cows. The Talmud takes the mother's wanting for granted; the dairy schedule in step four is built around cutting it off (Hudson & Mullord (1977)).
אֵיזֶהוּ גִבּוֹר, הַכּוֹבֵשׁ אֶת יִצְרוֹ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
"Who is mighty? The one who conquers his own impulse." Ben Zoma's answer, brought on Mishlei 16:32: better to be slow to anger than mighty, and to rule your own spirit than to capture a city.
The word is the one Nimrod carries in Bereishit 10:9. Ben Zoma is not coining a metaphor beside the ordinary meaning of gibor; he asks which man deserves the word and answers with the one who can decline something he wants.
צער בעלי חיים דאורייתא
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
A debate on whether animal suffering is a Torah-level prohibition.
The Talmud records a dispute; most later authorities, the Rif and the Rosh among them, treat it as Torah law. On every view, it binds. No opinion in the tradition permits needless animal suffering.
זִיל, לְכָךְ נוֹצַרְתָּ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Go. For this you were created.
The calf that hid its head under Rebbi's cloak, and the thirteen years of affliction that followed. The same passage gives Heaven's verdict both ways. When he sent the calf off: הוֹאִיל וְלָא קָא מְרַחֵם, לֵיתוֹ עֲלֵיהּ יִסּוּרִין, since he shows no mercy, let suffering come upon him. When he stopped his maidservant sweeping out a litter of young weasels, saying 'His mercy is on all His works': הוֹאִיל וּמְרַחֵם, נְרַחֵם עֲלֵיהּ, since he is merciful, let us be merciful to him.
מִנַּיִן שֶׁלֹּא יוֹשִׁיט אָדָם כּוֹס שֶׁל יַיִן לְנָזִיר... תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל... הָכָא בְּמַאי עָסְקִינַן? דְּקָאֵי בִּתְרֵי עֶבְרֵי נַהֲרָא
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
From where do we know that a person may not hand a cup of wine to a nazirite?... The verse says: you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind... What are we dealing with here? A case where they stand on two sides of a river.
The sugya every discussion of lifnei iver starts from. The Torah-level prohibition, the Gemara says, is the case of the nazirite across the river: he cannot reach the wine without you. Where he could have taken it himself, handing it over is not the Torah's lifnei iver, and the Rishonim argue over what it is instead (Tosafot on Shabbat 3a call it a rabbinic prohibition on assisting a sinner; the Rambam folds assisting into the verse at Hilchot Rotzeach 12:14). This is the narrow reading the step on complicity raises against itself: the question is whether a shed that runs on orders is the near bank or the far one.
מִנַּיִן שֶׁלֹּא יוֹשִׁיט אָדָם כּוֹס שֶׁל יַיִן לְנָזִיר, וְאֵבֶר מִן הַחַי לִבְנֵי נֹחַ? תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: ״וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל״
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
From where is it derived that a person may not extend a cup of wine to a nazirite, who is prohibited from drinking wine, and that he may not extend a limb severed from a living animal to descendants of Noah? The verse states: “And you shall not put a stumbling block before the blind”
The opening line of the sugya, in full; the translation is Sefaria's (William Davidson, Koren-Steinsaltz). The Talmud's own first examples of lifnei iver include handing a non-Jew a limb from a living animal, which the laws of the descendants of Noah forbid him: the ban on helping a wrong reaches helping a non-Jew break a law that binds him. Checked against Sefaria's text, Hebrew and English, on 10 October 2026.
Meat was not permitted to Adam.
כָּלוּ כׇּל הַקִּיצִּין, וְאֵין הַדָּבָר תָּלוּי אֶלָּא בִּתְשׁוּבָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Rav: all the appointed end-times have already passed, and the matter now depends on nothing but teshuvah and good deeds.
Shmuel answers on the same line, דַּיּוֹ לָאָבֵל שֶׁיַּעֲמוֹד בְּאֶבְלוֹ, it is enough for a mourner to stand in his mourning, and the page then records the Tannaitic form of the same dispute, R. Eliezer against R. Yehoshua. Note where R. Yehoshua actually lands: not that teshuvah is unnecessary, but that if Israel will not come to it, God will raise a king whose decrees are as harsh as Haman's until they do. Both sides route the redemption through teshuvah. They differ over whether we choose it.
מִצְוָה הַבָּאָה בַּעֲבֵירָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
A mitzvah that comes through a transgression. R. Yochanan, in the name of R. Shimon bar Yochai: a stolen lulav is invalid, one does not fulfil a mitzvah by means of a sin.
הֲרֵי שֶׁגָּזַל סְאָה שֶׁל חִטִּין, טְחָנָהּ, לָשָׁהּ וַאֲפָאָהּ, וְהִפְרִישׁ מִמֶּנָּה חַלָּה, כֵּיצַד מְבָרֵךְ? אֵין זֶה מְבָרֵךְ אֶלָּא מְנָאֵץ! וְעַל זֶה נֶאֱמַר: ״בֹּצֵעַ בֵּרֵךְ נִאֵץ ה׳״
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
R. Eliezer ben Yaakov: a man stole a se'ah of wheat, ground it, kneaded it and baked it, and separated challah from it. How can he make the blessing? This is not a man blessing, it is a man blaspheming, and of him it is said: "the robber who blesses insults the Lord."
The verse at the end is Tehillim 10:3, read here the way the Gemara reads it; translators of the psalm itself render בוצע differently. The sugya is not about blessings at all. It is listing sages of the Mishnah who say that changing a stolen object makes it the thief's, and this baraita is the proof, since a man owes challah only on dough that is his. So the law has already handed him the obligation and the words to say over it, and the baraita still answers that the blessing comes out as its opposite. Sukkah 30a is the same principle in the form most people know it.
כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
All Israel are guarantors for one another.
לִמְּדָה תּוֹרָה דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ, שֶׁלֹּא יֹאכַל אָדָם בָּשָׂר אֶלָּא לְתֵאָבוֹן
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
The Torah taught proper conduct: a person should eat meat only out of real appetite.
Said on the verse כִּי יַרְחִיב ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֶת גְּבֻלְךָ. It is taught as proper conduct, not law. The daf continues with R. Elazar ben Azaryah's ladder of income: a man with one maneh buys vegetables, with fifty maneh, meat, matching meat to one's means.
הַנַּח לָהֶם לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, מוּטָב שֶׁיִּהְיוּ שׁוֹגְגִין וְאַל יִהְיוּ מְזִידִין
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Leave Israel alone: better that they be unwitting than deliberate transgressors.
Codified at Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 608:2. The Rema limits it to prohibitions that are Torah-level but not explicit in the Torah, which is where tza'ar ba'alei chayim falls. The same gloss confines the silence to the public: one person must still be rebuked.
הֱוֵי דּוֹמֶה לוֹ, מָה הוּא חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם — אַף אַתָּה הֱיֵה חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Be like Him: as He is gracious and compassionate, so you be gracious and compassionate.
The prayer book
חֲמוֹל עַל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ. וְתִשְׂמַח בְּמַעֲשֶׂיךָ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Have compassion on Your works, and rejoice in Your works.
Said in the Musaf prayer on Rosh Hashana and again on Yom Kippur; quoted here from the Sephardic holiday prayer book on Sefaria, where it stands in both. In its setting the plea is for those standing in judgment that day. The word it chooses, ma'asecha, Your works, is the word of Tehillim 145:9, His mercy is on all His works, which covers everything He made. It is a prayer for mercy, not a ruling about food.
Medieval authorities
The universe does not exist for man's sake; each being exists for its own sake, and not because of some other thing. And on 'have dominion over the fish of the sea': the verse does not say that man was created for this purpose, only that this was the nature God gave him.
The Rambam's own words for the position, in Friedlander's rendering, from the chapter on whether creation has a purpose. He keeps man the most noble thing made of matter, and he keeps the plants for the animals to eat; what he refuses is the idea that everything else was made for us. Read it beside Rebbi's 'for this you were created' (Bava Metzia 85a). The Rambam was not answering Rebbi, but his position, written a thousand years later and in general terms, is that the calf was not made for our sake.
The Rambam affirms the prohibition of animal suffering, locating its Torah source in the angel's rebuke of Bilaam for striking his donkey.
There is no difference in this regard between the pain of a person and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for her young ones is not produced by reasoning, but by imagination, and this faculty exists not only in man but in most living beings. Said on shiluach haken and oto v'et b'no. (Friedlander, 1903.)
Lifnei iver extended to anyone who strengthens the hands of those who transgress.
אָסוּר לִקְנוֹת דָּבָר הַגָּזוּל מִן הַגַּזְלָן... שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹשֶׂה דְּבָרִים אֵלּוּ וְכַיּוֹצֵא בָּהֶן מְחַזֵּק יְדֵי עוֹבְרֵי עֲבֵרָה וְעוֹבֵר עַל... וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשׁל
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
It is forbidden to buy a stolen thing from the robber... for whoever does these things and the like strengthens the hands of transgressors and violates 'you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind'.
The second gap marked with dots skips only the verse reference. The robbery is finished before the buyer arrives, the robber is not his agent, and the Rambam still puts the purchase under the ban on helping a wrong, because it strengthens the hands of the next robbery. That is the buyer's case, in the Rambam's own code, and step three carries it over to the farm.
אֵי זוֹ הִיא תְּשׁוּבָה גְּמוּרָה? זֶה שֶׁבָּא לְיָדוֹ דָּבָר שֶׁעָבַר בּוֹ, וְאֶפְשָׁר בְּיָדוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹתוֹ, וּפֵרַשׁ וְלֹא עָשָׂה מִפְּנֵי הַתְּשׁוּבָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
What is complete teshuvah? One who encounters the very same opportunity in which he transgressed, and it is within his power to do it again, and he refrains, because of his return.
וְזֶה שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר בִּישַׁעְיָה... מָשָׁל וְחִידָה... וְלֹא יִגְזְלוּ וְלֹא יַשְׁחִיתוּ. אֶלָּא יֹאכְלוּ דָּבָר הַמֻּתָּר בְּנַחַת
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And that which is said in Yeshayahu ["the wolf shall dwell with the lamb"] is a parable and a riddle... they will not rob and will not destroy, but will eat what is permitted, peaceably.
The strongest source against reading Yeshayahu 11 literally, and it belongs to the same Rambam this site leans on everywhere else. He reads the wolf as the nations and the lamb as Israel. Worth reading to the end of the halacha even so: unpacking the parable, he keeps the eating in it. The change he describes is from taking by force to eating what is permitted, and he anchors that on 'the lion shall eat straw like the ox.'
אַךְ הַבָּשָׂר לֹא הֻרְשׁוּ בּוֹ עַד בְּנֵי נֹחַ כְּדַעַת רַבּוֹתֵינוּ, וְהוּא פְּשׁוּטוֹ שֶׁל מִקְרָא. וְהָיָה זֶה מִפְּנֵי שֶׁבַּעֲלֵי נֶפֶשׁ הַתְּנוּעָה יֵשׁ לָהֶם קְצָת מַעֲלָה בְּנַפְשָׁם... וְיֵשׁ לָהֶם בְּחִירָה בְּטוֹבָתָם וּמְזוֹנֵיהֶם וְיִבְרְחוּ מִן הַצַּעַר וְהַמִּיתָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
But meat they were not permitted until the sons of Noach, as our Rabbis hold, and that is the plain sense of the verse. And this was because creatures with a soul that moves have some standing in their soul... they choose what is good for them and their food, and they flee from pain and from death.
The elision skips his comparison of that standing to the rational soul. He is giving the reason meat was withheld from Adam, not a reason it is forbidden now; his next words grant the permission to Noach. What he says animals have, a preference for their own good, and flight from pain and death, is what the Torah means when it calls an animal נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה, a living soul.
כי מלבד מה שיש בהריגת הבעלי חיים אכזריות חמה ושטף אף ולמוד תכונה רעה אל האדם לשפוך דם חנם... ואפילו מה שהתיר מהם לא דברה תורה אלא כנגד יצר הרע, כמו שהתיר להם יפת תואר על זה הדרך... הנה גלו בפירוש שאכילת הבשר לא הותר אלא על צד ההכרח
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Besides the cruelty, rage and fury there is in killing living creatures, and its teaching a person the bad trait of shedding blood for nothing... even what the Torah permitted of them, 'the Torah spoke only against the evil inclination,' as it permitted the captive woman in the same way... they revealed plainly that eating meat was permitted only by way of necessity.
Spain, early fifteenth century; the chapter is on Kayin and Hevel. Between the first fragment and the second he adds that meat 'produces coarseness and dullness in the soul,' and after the third that it was withheld at Creation 'though it is good food,' as wine is good and the Nazir who abstains is called holy. So he is not saying meat is bad; he is saying what kind of permission it is. His 'they' are the Sages of Chullin 84a. His last clause is a Rishon's reading of the permission, not a ruling; Devarim 12:20 grants meat for craving.
וְזֶה הַלָּאו כּוֹלֵל כְּמוֹ כֵן מִי שֶׁיַּעֲזֹר עוֹבֵר עֲבֵרָה, שֶׁהוּא מֵבִיא אוֹתוֹ שֶׁיִּתְפַּתֶּה בְּזוּלַת זֶה לַעֲבֹר פְּעָמִים אֲחֵרִים עוֹד... שֹׁרֶשׁ הַמִּצְוָה. יָדוּעַ, כִּי תִּקּוּן הָעוֹלָם וְיִשּׁוּבוֹ הוּא לְהַדְרִיךְ בְּנֵי אָדָם
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And this prohibition likewise includes one who helps a transgressor, for he brings him to be tempted, through this, to transgress other times as well... The root of the commandment: it is known that the repair of the world and its settlement is to guide people.
On וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר. The Chinuch's own example of 'helping' is the lender and the borrower at interest, who both transgress lifnei iver (Bava Metzia 75b), a case where the help is money, and where nobody is deceived.
וענינו אצלי שאכילת הבשר לבעלי חיים, מוליד בו אכזריות חמה ותכונה רעה... כשנתן הקדוש ברוך הוא רשות לנח ולבניו לאכול בשר אמר... אך את דמכם לנפשותיכם אדרוש, מפני שחשש שמפאת האכזריות והזדון אשר יתילד בהם מאכילת הבשר יהרגו איש לאחיו
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And its meaning, to me, is that eating flesh breeds in a living creature cruelty, rage and a bad disposition... When the Holy One gave Noach and his sons leave to eat meat, He said, in the next verse, 'But your blood, of your lives, I will require', because He feared that from the cruelty and malice which eating meat would breed in them, a man would kill his brother.
On 'the lion shall eat straw like the ox.' The second elision skips only his verse reference (Bereishit 9:5). He is reading the order of the verses in Bereishit 9: first the permission, then at once the ban on murder. He cites Chullin 84a for it. It is the claim of the Ramban and the Chinuch, that the laws about animals are aimed at what we become, in its sharpest form. He is not calling anyone who eats meat a murderer, and neither does this site.
נָבָל בִּרְשׁוּת הַתּוֹרָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
A degenerate with the Torah's permission.
Kedusha, holiness, is restraint within what is permitted.
אֵין זֶה מוֹסִיף אֶלָּא עוֹשֶׂה סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
This is not adding to the Torah; it is making a fence around it.
Some object that forbidding what the Torah permits is bal tosif, adding to the Torah. The Rambam answers that a court may do it as a fence. But the court of this chapter is the Great Sanhedrin (Mamrim 1:1, 2:1), the only court whose new decrees bind all Israel, and none sits today. So no halachic authority now can forbid meat for every Jew. A rav can still fence his own community, and none has; and applying the existing prohibition on needless suffering to a practice needs no decree at all.
Later authorities
דַּאֲפִלּוּ בְּשַׁבָּת אִם יִרְצֶה שֶׁלֹּא לֶאֱכֹל בָּשָׂר הָרְשׁוּת בְּיָדוֹ... שֶׁאֵינוֹ מְחוּיָּב שֶׁיֹּאכַל בָּשָׂר וְיַיִן... וְאֵין חִיּוּב לֶאֱכֹל בָּשָׂר רַק בִּזְמַן שֶׁבֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ קַיָּם
Differs from the linked edition only in expanding abbreviations — confirmed by hand · 2026-09-28
Even on Shabbat, if he wishes not to eat meat, the choice is his... for he is not obligated to eat meat and wine... and there is no obligation to eat meat except when the Temple stands.
R. Avraham Gombiner, seventeenth century, the standard commentary printed beside the Shulchan Aruch, in a note on the Purim meal. He is reasoning from the ruling in Yoreh Deah 341 that a mourner between death and burial, forbidden meat and wine on a weekday, may take them on Shabbat if he wants to. The Rabbeinu Yonah he quotes explains why: nobody is obliged to eat meat on Shabbat in the first place. Then he generalises, and lands on the Pesachim 109a distinction: the obligation belonged to the Temple.
בְּהֵמָה שֶׁנָּפְלָה לְאַמַּת הַמַּיִם, אִם הַמַּיִם עֲמוּקִים וּמִפְּנֵי כָּךְ אֵין יָכוֹל לְפַרְנְסָהּ בִּמְקוֹמָהּ, מֵבִיא כָּרִים וּכְסָתוֹת וְנוֹתֵן תַּחְתֶּיהָ מִשּׁוּם צַעַר בַּעֲלֵי חַיִּים
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
An animal that fell into a water channel on Shabbat: if the water is deep, so that it cannot be fed where it is, one brings cushions and blankets and puts them under it, because of tza'ar ba'alei chayim. The se'if continues: even though that renders a vessel unusable, which is otherwise a rabbinic Shabbat prohibition.
With Mishnah Berurah 305:69-70, which states the reason plainly: tza'ar ba'alei chayim is Torah-level, and the rabbis set their own Shabbat fences aside for it. The next se'if (305:20) does the same for a cow whose milk is hurting her.
כָּל דָּבָר הַצָּרִיךְ לִרְפוּאָה אוֹ לִשְׁאָר דְּבָרִים לֵית בֵּיהּ מִשּׁוּם אִיסּוּר צַעַר בַּעֲלֵי חַיִּים... וְלָכֵן מוּתָּר לִמְרוֹט נוֹצוֹת מֵאֲוָזוֹת חַיּוֹת וְלֵיכָּא לְמֵיחַשׁ מִשּׁוּם צַעַר בַּעֲלֵי חַיִּים... הָעוֹלָם נִמְנָעִים דַּהֲוֵי אַכְזָרִיּוּת
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
Anything needed for healing or for other purposes carries no prohibition of tza'ar ba'alei chayim... Therefore it is permitted to pluck feathers from live geese, and there is no concern of tza'ar ba'alei chayim... People refrain, because it is cruelty.
The line later rulings on animal pain argue from, and it sits in a gloss on the laws of castration. The Rema codifies the Terumat HaDeshen (Pesakim uChtavim 105) and the Issur VeHeter HaAruch (59): human need makes it permitted. Everything downstream, the Noda BiYehuda on hunting, Igrot Moshe on veal, the debates over what counts as need, is an argument about this sentence. Read all three clauses. The permission is conditioned on need. The example is a real practice of the Rema's day. And the last clause, which in the original opens with 'nevertheless', is the Rema's own report that people refrained, and his own word for why: cruelty.
Reads the Rambam as holding tza'ar ba'alei chayim Biblical; the Ohr Same'ach reads otherwise.
וְיוֹדֵעַ תְּכוּנַת נַפְשָׁהּ לָתֵת לָהּ מְזוֹנוֹתֶיהָ בָּעֵת הָרָאוּי וּכְפִי הָרָאוּי, וְשֶׁלֹּא יַכְבִּיד מְלַאכְתָּהּ יוֹתֵר עַל יְכׇלְתָּהּ... גַּם אִם תִּרְאֶה מִמֶּנּוּ מִדַּת הָרַחֲמִים הוּא מִצַּד הָאַכְזָרִיּוּת הַנִּסְתָּר בּוֹ, לְמָשָׁל שֶׁיְּרַחֵם עַל הָאָדָם הַכָּבוּשׁ תַּחַת יָדוֹ וְלֹא יַהַרְגֶנּוּ כְּדֵי שֶׁיִּכְבְּשֶׁנּוּ לְעֶבֶד לְצׇרְכּוֹ, שֶׁיְּרַחֵם עַל בְּהֶמְתּוֹ וְיוֹסִיף בְּמַאֲכָלָהּ כְּדֵי שֶׁיַּכְבִּיד עָלֶיהָ עֲבוֹדָה בְּיֶתֶר שְׂאֵת
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
And he knows the nature of her soul, to give her her food at the right time and in the right measure, and not to burden her work beyond her strength... Even if you see in him the trait of mercy, it comes from the cruelty hidden in him: as when he spares the man crushed under his hand and does not kill him, in order to keep him as a slave for his own use; or has mercy on his animal and adds to her feed, in order to load heavier work on her.
The nineteenth-century commentator's reading of both halves of the verse (Mishlei 12:10). The righteous man's knowing is practical: her food, her hours, her strength. And the mercy of the wicked is not a paradox, it is a business: kindness measured out because it pays. He adds, in passing, that tza'ar ba'alei chayim is Torah law. Read it against a welfare standard set by the people who sell the animal, and then read the site's own caution: the verse names an arrangement, not the reader.
וְהוּא הַדִּין בְּכָל דָּבָר אִסּוּר אָמְרִינַן מוּטָב שֶׁיִּהְיוּ שׁוֹגְגִין וְלֹא יִהְיוּ מְזִידִין, וְדַוְקָא שֶׁאֵינוֹ מְפֹרָשׁ בַּתּוֹרָה אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁהוּא דְּאוֹרַיְתָא... אֲבָל בְּיָחִיד חַיָּב לְהוֹכִיחוֹ עַד שֶׁיַּכֶּנּוּ אוֹ יְקַלְּלֶנּוּ
Differs from the linked edition only in expanding abbreviations — confirmed by hand · 2026-09-28
The same applies to every prohibition: better they be unwitting than deliberate, and specifically where it is not explicit in the Torah, even though it is Torah-level... but with an individual, one is obligated to rebuke him until he strikes him or curses him.
Read the whole gloss before leaning on it in either direction. It limits the rule to prohibitions that are Torah-level but not written out in the Torah, which is where tza'ar ba'alei chayim sits. It then confines the silence to public rebuke and reverses for the individual: with a single person, one must rebuke until struck or cursed. A rav and one congregant is the individual case, not the public one.
לְקַיֵּם צַוָּאַת רַבִּי יְהוּדָה הֶחָסִיד שֶׁלֹּא לְגַדֵּל אֶפְרוֹחִים כְּלָל, כִּי לֹא יוּכַל לַעֲמֹד עַל הַמִּשְׁמָר שֶׁלֹּא יִהְיֶה לָהֶם צַעַר
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
To keep the testament of R. Yehuda HeChasid not to raise chicks at all, because one cannot stand guard well enough to keep them from suffering.
R. Eliezer Papo, Sarajevo, 1824, in the entry on animals of his handbook of conduct, which opens by calling tza'ar ba'alei chayim Torah law and citing the order of a household's meals (Berachot 40a). He passes on the will of R. Yehuda HeChasid, the author of Sefer Chasidim, and gives its reason in his own words: a person who keeps birds cannot watch closely enough to spare them pain. Said of a courtyard with a few chicks in it.
Tza'ar ba'alei chayim applies only to causing an animal pain and leaving it alive; to kill an animal does not fall under tza'ar ba'alei chayim at all. Stated here as a summary of the ruling, in the site's words; follow the link for the responsum's own.
Fatal to any frontal attack on slaughter, and it should be faced squarely: the animal's death is not the halachic problem. Only its life is. Note the provenance. R. Yechezkel Landau is not innovating here; he is citing the Terumat HaDeshen (מהרא"י, Pesakim uChtavim §105) and adopting the rule, which makes it older and heavier than one posek's opinion. He then does something this site should sit with: he clears sport hunting on strict law, condemns it as cruelty and not the way of the children of Abraham, finds a separate prohibition to forbid it with, and tells the man to stay home. An earlier revision of this entry printed a vocalized Hebrew sentence here as though it were the responsum's wording; it was a summary, not a transcription, and it is gone. This entry now claims only the position, in English.
אֲבָל אִם יְכוֹלִים לִקְנוֹת בְּמָקוֹם אַחֵר מוּתָּר לִמְכּוֹר לָהֶם כׇּל דָּבָר... וְיֵשׁ מַחְמִירִין וְנָהֲגוּ לְהָקֵל כִּסְבָרָא הָרִאשׁוֹנָה וְכׇל בַּעַל נֶפֶשׁ יַחְמִיר לְעַצְמוֹ
Checked against Sefaria's text, word for word, 2026-09-28
But if they can buy it elsewhere, it is permitted to sell them anything... And some are strict; the custom is to be lenient, like the first view, and every ba'al nefesh should be strict with himself.
The Rema's gloss on selling to idolaters things they will use in their worship, the code's standing ruling on lifnei iver where the sinner has another supplier. Read all of it, because it is the strongest objection to the step on complicity and also its answer. The lenient view is real and it is the custom: where the wrong could be done without you, the law does not hold you for it. And the sentence ends by handing the question back to the person: a ba'al nefesh, someone who takes his own soul seriously, holds himself to the stricter view anyway. That is the Rema's own word for what this site asks of a reader who accepts the lenient view.
Modern authorities
וְהִנֵּה לְאֵלּוּ שֶׁעוֹשִׂין זֶה אִיכָּא וַדַּאי אִסּוּר דְּצַעַר בַּעֲלֵי חַיִּים, דְּאַף שֶׁהֻתַּר לְצֹרֶךְ הָאָדָם הוּא כְּשֶׁאִיכָּא צֹרֶךְ... אֲבָל לֹא לְצַעֲרָם בְּעָלְמָא, שֶׁזֶּה אָסוּר אַף אִם יִהְיֶה לְאֶחָד הַרְוָחָה בָּזֶה... וּבַעֲלֵי נֶפֶשׁ אֵין לָהֶם לֶאֱכֹל כְּלָל מֵעֲגָלִים כָּאֵלּוּ
Not machine-checkable — no Sefaria text to compare. It has to be checked by hand instead.
For those who do this there is certainly a prohibition of tza'ar ba'alei chayim. Although this is permissible when done to serve human needs, that is only when there is a true need... But it is not permissible to cause them pain for no good reason, even if there exists an individual who will derive some profit from this... A ba'al nefesh should not eat from such calves at all.
Addressed to his son-in-law, R. Moshe David Tendler. Read it whole before leaning on it. The prohibition is laid on the producers. To the eater he gives advice for the scrupulous, not a decree, and his bar on eating rests largely on defects that make the meat non-kosher: strict slaughterers passed about 15% of such calves, lenient ones 44 to 45%. The same ruling permits pain for real human need, and fattening animals so their meat tastes better. White veal fails because the benefit is cosmetic, not because profit is disqualifying; one published reading says misleading the buyer decided it (Zivotofsky et al., Hakirah 25). Its closing line calls raising it forbidden 'מאיסור צער בע״ח מדאורייתא', by the Torah's own prohibition on causing animals pain, as printed in the linked source sheet.
A compilation of classical sources on animals and meat, in six chapters: lifnei iver and tza'ar ba'alei chayim; 'no joy except with meat'; the Torah's attitude to eating meat; what the sacrifices were for; what the animals are for; and a set of questions and answers. Approbations of R. M. Zuriel, R. D. Sperber, R. D. Rosen, R. N. L. Cardozo.
Cited for the book itself and for who wrote it. Every text this site prints that also appears in the book is cited at its own address and was checked there, against Sefaria or the original publication; nothing on this site rests on the book's authority. No authority on Jewish law has ruled on buying meat, milk and eggs, and a letter of approval is not a ruling.
הכלל הוא שכל מה שהאדם עושה לתועלתו ולא לשם אכזריות מותר, ולכן מותר לגדל בצפיפות רבה תרנגולים ועגלים לבשר כדי לחסוך בעלויות גידולם
Not machine-checkable — no Sefaria text to compare. It has to be checked by hand instead.
The rule is that whatever a person does for his benefit, and not for the sake of cruelty, is permitted, and therefore it is permitted to raise chickens and calves for meat in great density, in order to save on the costs of raising them.
A hard source to answer, and it is on the other side. Peninei Halacha is among the most widely read halachic works in Israel, and here it addresses industrial density directly and permits it, on the ground that benefit rather than cruelty is the test. It does mean the question has reached a posek's desk and been answered in print.
A rebuttal to the Zelcers, by three shochtim of thirty years' standing, a veterinarian of forty years in Israel's Veterinary Services, and a Cornell food scientist: to say that the way animals are raised on these farms is tza'ar ba'alei chayim, and that they should therefore be deemed unfit for kosher consumption, is in their opinion incorrect.
Printed alongside the Zelcers' reply in the same issue (Hakirah 25, pp. 29–36), so the exchange runs three rounds and the reader can follow all of it. Their reading of Igrot Moshe EH 4:92 is that Rav Moshe forbade white veal for ona'ah, misleading the buyer, rather than for cruelty.
Written for the Zelcers' article: the practices of factory farming may well constitute tza'ar ba'alei chayim, and the meat and poultry produced by them remain permitted to eat.
The strongest source against this site's case. A senior posek was sent a written description of the practices, granted that they may well be tza'ar ba'alei chayim, and permitted the food anyway. On the usual explanation, the prohibition falls on the person doing the act, and halacha has no way to make the meat itself forbidden. The Zelcers also report Kamenetsky's view that Igrot Moshe's veal teshuvah in fact rejects the Terumat HaDeshen and the Rema who codified him, and that Rav Moshe simply declined to say so.
Data
83+ billion land animals slaughtered per year, roughly 2,600 every second.
Chickens alone are about 75 of the 83 billion, 75.4 billion slaughtered in 2022 in the same FAOSTAT series, which is why step four starts from one hen. Fish are counted separately.
Fish have nociceptors in the lip, fin and skin; injected with an irritant they rub the spot, rock, and stop eating: pain behaviour, not reflex. The review concludes that fish likely feel pain.
Five minutes with her calf after birth is enough to form a strong bond specific to that calf. Separated, every cow in the study showed distress — walking, urinating, butting, vocalising continually from one end of the paddock. She could still recognise her own calf twelve hours later. By twenty-four hours she was still distressed, and could no longer tell which calf was hers.
A 1977 husbandry study, not an advocacy paper — which is why this page leans on it. Note what it does not say: it did not measure whether she suffers more or less than a human mother would, and it is one study from one herd.
When their chicks were exposed to a mildly aversive puff of air, mother hens showed the physiological and behavioural marks of empathy: heart rate up, eye temperature down, alertness heightened, and more calling to the chicks, responding to the young's distress as a stressor of their own.
A controlled study. The finding is a matched physiological-and-behavioural response to another's distress, which the authors frame as one of the building blocks of empathy, not a claim of full human-style empathy.
Male chicks of laying breeds cannot lay and do not fatten well, so the egg industry kills them the day they hatch, by maceration or gassing, on the order of billions a year worldwide. The practice was judged indefensible enough that Germany banned it from 1 January 2022, and France from 2023.
A peer-reviewed review, cited for the practice and its rationale rather than a precise tally (global estimates cluster around 6–7 billion a year). Germany's ban took effect 1 January 2022; France's decree followed, with white-egg layer lines, over a tenth of French male chicks, carved out because they are harder to sex in the egg. In-ovo sexing is now the alternative, and it does nothing at all for the hens themselves.
The EU's own scientific panel on beak trimming: it causes negative welfare consequences, it is done to manage injurious pecking, and it "should not be necessary if good management practices are implemented", the Panel recommends phasing it out. On cages, it finds the space and the barren environment prevent hens from performing the behaviours they are motivated to perform.
A regulator's scientific opinion, not a campaign document, which is why it is here. Note what it does and does not say: it describes harm and recommends phasing the practice out; it does not call the industry cruel. That word is this page's, and it is argued for rather than borrowed.
Commercial turkeys are bred by artificial insemination, week after week. Selection for a heavier, broader breast left the toms unable to transfer semen reliably at copulation. There is effectively no natural mating left in the industry.
The common line that these birds are physically incapable of mating is stronger than the literature supports: they can mate, but not reliably enough for commercial production, so the whole industry runs on insemination by hand. The bird was bred into a body that can no longer reliably breed unless a person does it by hand.
Calves are routinely disbudded, the horn bud destroyed with a hot iron or caustic paste, and the Panel states plainly that both procedures cause severe pain. It also addresses castration, and the separation of the calf from its mother, which it identifies as a welfare consequence in its own right: "The great majority of dairy farms separate dam and calf immediately after birth." The Panel recommends keeping them together for at least 24 hours.
Anaesthesia is compulsory for disbudding in some member states and not in others, which is the point: the pain is not disputed, only whether anyone is required to prevent it.
Meat, aquaculture, eggs and dairy use ~83% of the world's farmland and return 18% of humanity's calories, and 37% of its protein. 38,700 farms across 119 countries.
Two sentences of its abstract matter for how every figure drawn from it should be read. First, the caveat: "Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product", so an average says very little about any one farm. Second, what the authors concluded once they had accounted for that: "Most strikingly, impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes, providing new evidence for the importance of dietary change."
Not modelled plates, 55,504 people's real recorded diets, matched to 570 life-cycle assessments. Measured against people eating 100g of meat a day or more, vegan diets came to 25.1% of their greenhouse gas (95% uncertainty interval 15.1–37.0%), 25.1% of their land use (7.1–44.5%), 27.0% of their eutrophication (19.4–40.4%), 34.3% of their biodiversity impact (12.0–65.3%) and 46.4% of their water use (21.0–81.0%). Every measure moved with the amount of animal food eaten.
The answer to the obvious objection that per-food figures are laboratory numbers about idealised plates. These are diets people actually reported eating, in Britain, and the ranking holds all the way down the scale: high meat, medium, low, fish, vegetarian, vegan. The uncertainty intervals are wide, particularly on water and biodiversity, and are quoted here rather than hidden: even at the unfavourable end of every one of them, the direction does not reverse.
The spread inside a single food is enormous, so the objection that an average says nothing about one particular farm is a real one. Run the comparison in the objector's favour anyway, the best-performing tenth of each animal food against the worst-performing tenth of each plant, per 100g of protein, and it holds: lamb 12 and beef 9 kg CO₂eq at their cleanest, against tofu 3.5, nuts 2.4 and peas 0.8 at their dirtiest. Only one pairing meets: the best chicken and the worst nuts are both 2.4.
An analysis of Poore & Nemecek's own dataset rather than a new measurement, and cited here for exactly that: it is the percentile spread the underlying paper reports, set out so a reader can see where the distributions overlap and where they do not. The chicken-against-nuts row is the one that cuts against this page and it is drawn on the chart. Our World in Data is a project of the Global Change Data Lab and the University of Oxford, and publishes its sources and code with every chart.
Grazing does pull carbon into the soil. The report puts the global potential at 295–800 Mt CO₂eq a year, which "offsets 20-60% of emissions from grazing systems: 4–11% of total livestock emissions, and between 0.6 and 1.6% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions." The effect is also time-limited and reversible: soil saturates, and what it holds is released again if the management stops.
Cited because of who wrote it, not only what it says. Eleven researchers across Oxford, Wageningen, Aberdeen, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, FiBL and CSIRO, and the report spends as much effort correcting overstatement by campaigners against livestock as by advocates for it. It is blunt that the highly ambitious claims made for holistic grazing are wrong, and equally blunt that grass-fed systems have real benefits that carbon accounting misses. The site takes its finding and not its side.
Appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.
This paper carried a stated expiry of 31 December 2021 and was replaced in February 2025. See Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics (2025). Cited here because it is the paper the all-stages-of-life claim traces to; the 2025 replacement restricts its scope to adults and does not repeat the life-cycle language. Both are on the page.
The Academy's current position, in effect to 31 December 2032: in adults, appropriately planned vegetarian and vegan dietary patterns can be nutritionally adequate. Vegan dietary patterns, it says, exclude all foods of animal origin.
The replacement is narrower than its predecessor: it addresses adults, and drops the 2016 paper's explicit endorsement for pregnancy, infancy, and childhood, not because those were retracted, but because the review's scope was set to adults. The site states the narrower claim; its argument only needs that a healthy animal-free diet is available to the person reading it.
Within living memory, meaning ours is the first generation for which a complete, reliably healthy animal-free diet has ever been practically possible.
Two teams, simultaneously: Rickes, Brink, Koniuszy, Wood and Folkers at Merck ("Crystalline Vitamin B12," Science 107:396–7, the linked paper) and E. Lester Smith at Glaxo ("Purification of Anti-pernicious Anæmia Factors from Liver," Nature 161:638–9, doi 10.1038/161638a0). The site's claim that ours is the first generation able to live this way turns on this date, so it rests on the primary papers, not a retelling.
The USDA oversees 22 producer-funded "checkoff" marketing programs, the ones behind "Got Milk?" and "Beef. It's What's for Dinner". In 2016 their assessments totalled over $885 million, ranging from $0.6 million for popcorn to $332.1 million for dairy.
A neutral government-auditor source, not an advocacy one. Checkoff assessments are federally mandated marketing orders; the figures are the GAO's, for 2016. Private advertising by processors and restaurant chains is separate, and far larger.