I’ll never stop eating animals, I’m sure, but I do think that for the benefit of everyone, the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly.

Bittman draws a distinction between eating animals per se and the modern system that produces most meat. The first clause signals personal honesty—he is not presenting himself as a purist—while the second argues for a moral and civic shift: end industrial-scale confinement and treat meat as a considered choice rather than an automatic habit. The quote implies that “thoughtless” consumption hides real costs (animal suffering, environmental damage, public-health risks, and labor harms) by making meat cheap and ubiquitous. Its significance lies in offering a pragmatic, reformist ethic—reduce and rethink meat—rather than an all-or-nothing demand for universal vegetarianism.