“I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother” is a vegan saying that has been printed on many images. “‘I don’t eat anything that had a mother,’ is the way Jacobs (Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr.—ed.) describes his eating habits” was printed in the Indianapolis (IN) Star on June 3, 1987.
 
The saying was popularized by American journalist, teacher, lecturer, pacifist, progressive, an anarchist, and long-time peace activist Colman McCarthy. “Live by the rules of a healthy diet and a simple morality: Don’t eat anything that had a mother” wrote on November 19, 1987 in his syndicated column. “I tell my students not to eat anything that had a mother” was printed in the Los Angeles (CA) Times on February 15, 1994.
 
“People often ask me about the vegetarian business. I think that I was a vegetarian long before it was fashionable, about 40 years ago. I just don’t eat anything that had a mother, that’s all” was said by Fred Rogers (television’s “Mister Rogers”) in an interview with the Los Angeles (CA) Times on October 20, 1997. Rogers is usually credited with the saying, although this was ten years after it was first cited in print.
       
     
Wikipedia: Colman McCarthy
Colman McCarthy (born March 24, 1938 in Glen Head, New York), an American journalist, teacher, lecturer, pacifist, progressive, an anarchist, and long-time peace activist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. From 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post. His topics ranged from politics, religion, health, and sports to education, poverty, and peacemaking. Washingtonian magazine called him “the liberal conscience of The Washington Post.”
   
Wikipedia: Fred Rogers
Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003), also known as Mister Rogers, was an American television personality, musician, puppeteer, writer, producer, and Presbyterian minister. He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001.
   
Newspapers.com
3 June 1987, Indianapolis (IN) Star, “Something’s Cooking in Congress” by Doug McDaniel, pg. 41, col. 1:
“I don’t eat anything that had a mother,” is the way Jacobs (Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr.—ed.) describes his eating habits.
 
Newspapers.com
19 November 1987, Honolulu (HI) Star-Bulletin, “Turkeys face the cutting edge” by Colman McCarthy, pg. A-15, col. 3:
Live by the rules of a healthy diet and a simple morality: Don’t eat anything that had a mother.
   
Google Books
Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills
By John Langan and Lynn Jenkins
Cherry Hill, NJ: Townsend Press
1989
Pg. 55:
My sister became a vegetarian because she doesn’t want to eat anything that had a mother.
   
Google Books
All of One Peace:
Essays on Nonviolence
By Colman McCarthy
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
1994
Pg. 177:
Live by the rules of a healthy diet and a simple morality: Don’t eat anything that had a mother.
 
Newspapers.com
15 February 1994, Los Angeles (CA) Times, “America’s Professor of Peace” by Bettijane Levine, pg. E2, col. 4:
(Colman—ed.) McCarthy’s audiences are startled sometimes when he suddenly shifts gears from peace mongering to the evils of eating meat.
       
It’s a part of the whole nonviolence thing, he says. “I tell my students not to eat anything that had a mother.”
 
Newspapers.com
24 August 1997, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), “Just for Kids” by Carolyn Heiman, pg. D1, col. 2:
The two then go on to be moral vegetarians, refusing to eat anything that has a mother.
 
Newspapers.com
26 October 1997, Sunday News (Lancaster, PA), “Mister Rogers is an avid swimmer” by Candace Wedlan (Los Angeles Times), pg. G-2, col. 6:
“I (Fred Rogers—ed.) love pasta, mostly angel hair. And vegetables and lentil burgers. People often ask me about the vegetarian business. I think that I was a vegetarian long before it was fashionable, about 40 years ago. I just don’t eat anything that had a mother, that’s all.”
(Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on October 20, 1997.—ed.)
 
Newspapers.com
13 January 1998, Indianapolis (IN) Star, “Pro-animal group urges Christians to become vegetarians” by Judith Cebula, pg. E2, col. 4:
“I don’t eat anything that has a mother or a heartbeat,” she (Linda Clemons, morning host of WTLC radio—ed.) says.
   
Google Books
365 Good Reasons to be a Vegetarian
By Victor M. Parachin
Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publishing Group
1998  
Pg. 111:
“I just don’t eat anything that has a mother.” — Fred Rogers
 
Twitter
Tim Madigan
@tsmadigan
Fred Rogers was never a Navy Seal. He was a vegetarian who would “never eat anything that had a mother.”
3:01 PM · Oct 26, 2012·Socialyzer App
   
Twitter
Eric Johnson
@ericjeric
“I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother.” -Fred Rogers
2:26 AM · Jan 7, 2013·Twitter for iPad
 
Google Books
Peaceful Neighbor:
Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers
By Michael Long
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press
2015
Pg. 158:
“I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother,” he often said.
 
Twitter
Vegan Posters
@veganposters
I don’t want to eat anything that had a mother. - Fred Rogers #vegan
6:13 AM · Sep 20, 2016·VeganPosters
 
Twitter
Vegan Vox
@vgnvox
I don’t want to eat anything that had a mother.
-Fred Rogers
10:22 AM · Mar 15, 2018·Vegan Vox