“Though the industrial logic that made feeding cattle to cattle seem like a good idea has been thrown into doubt by mad cow disease, I was surprised to learn it hadn't been discarded. The FDA ban on feeding ruminant protein to ruminants makes an exception for blood products and fat; my steer will probably dine on beef tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he's heading to in June.”

“Eating dinner with conservation biologists was like walking through a minefield of ethical decisions: grasslands have been overgrazed by steer raised for beef, and all cattle emit greenhouse gases though enteric fermentation; the poop from industrially raised chickens poisons the Chesapeake; the Amazon has been slashed and burned for soy--and don't even mention seafood. To this bunch of herpetologists, the sin of ordering shrimp lay in the bycatch--young fish, and especially sea turtles, caught in the nets and discarded, dead or dying.”

“Red cattle," Annabeth said. "The cattle of the sun.""What?" I [Percy] asked."They're sacred to Apollo.""Holy cows?”

“Why should quiet ruminants as you and I have been born in such a ghastly age? ”

“I'm standing in a slaughterhouse where the cattle are begging to become hamburgers. I have a right to be jumpy.”

“To country people Cows are mild,And flee from any stick they throw;But I’m a timid town bred child,And all the cattle seem to know.”