What's Next For Jonathan Safran Foer And Eating Animals?

Beginning the week of October 26, 2009, we ran a series of reviews on HuffPost Books on Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, Eating Animals. It was a surprise in many ways--Safran Foer is known as a novelist, so to have a strong piece of non-fiction as his next book caught many unaware.

Even more intriguing has been the intensity of reaction to his heartfelt exploration of cruelty to animals and the pollution from animal farming. The blogs excerpted below were among the most viewed and most e-mailed of the entire Huffington Post site for the week.

Overwhelmingly, readers have been asking for more--a plan for how to make change, so stay tuned for a new series, and let us know what you'd like to hear more of.

Aaron Gross:

Eating Animals is part personal journey, part modern muckraking and a surprisingly candid and empathetic book on food. Foer doesn't preach but instead invites us to have a conversation with family farmers and factory farmers, animal activists and slaughterhouse workers. His book is important not because he has all the answers (he often acknowledges his own uncertainty), but because he asks the right questions and makes it impossible for us not to ask them too. Read More

Natalie Portman:

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. Read More

Dr. Andrew Weil:

Foer makes it clear that factory farming is the exceptional human activity that debases and destroys everything it touches: land, people, communities, and most of all, the innocents at the nexus, animals. Read More

Rabbi David Wolpe:

There is no essential difference between the animals we eat -- birds, cows, pigs -- and those we would not eat -- horses, perhaps, and dogs. No difference, that is, except that we form bonds with the latter and don't allow ourselves to form bonds with the former. But would you condemn your dog to a life of agony and then kill it for dinner? Read More

Kathy Freston:

In the end, the book is about much more than food. It is not only a book about eating animals, but about how we shape our world by what we eat. It is a book about who we are and who we could become. As one of Foer's friends wrote to him upon his son Sasha's birth, "Everything is possible again." The world is never fixed and neither are we. When we think seriously about the food we eat, we all have another chance at being more true to ourselves. We have another chance to be better. Read More

Comments

[Abolitionister]

I just finished the first few pages of the book (got it in the mail today) and the series of columns you're running on it are great. I think the amount of discourse about animal issues on Huffington Post is indicative of just how important this issue is.

As an abolitionist vegan (advocating for no cages as opposed to bigger cages), I would like to see discussions on the differences between the idea of abolition of animal use as opposed to regulation. Groups like PETA and HSUS work with animal exploiters to ostensibly improve animal lives, all the while making these companies more profitable and more marketable.

There is a very real and increasingly visible and vocal animal rights community who are committed to the abolition of animal exploitation as opposed to the regulation of animal exploitation, and who see the best means of achieving this not through laws, but by having frank discussions with friends and family about the importance of animal rights and veganism.

Voices you may want to recruit for discussions and opinions regarding abolitionist views are Rutgers Law professor Gary Francione (http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/), the folks over at Vegan Freak (http://veganfreak.com/), and Mary Martin (whose post here: http://www.animalperson.net/animal_person/2009/10/on-eating-animals-by-jonathan-safran-foer.html could/should easily be the next review of Eating Animals that Huff runs). Just to name three.

[ottabox]

Thank you Huffington Post for bringing this series to readers. The debates in the series were heated for sure. People have a passion for the subject. The dialogue in the comments section have the potential to be transformative for those who are willing to examine their assumptions, beliefs and attitudes (that normally go unchallenged). I think there is a hunger to act on the self-reflection the series provoked and I look forward to reading more on the topic.

[BlueZoo]

I want a hamburger!

[LumberingOaf]

With bacon!

[HeevenSteven]

I hear animals are the new vegetables!...lol..

[cucumber]

fantastic! Please enjoy your heart attack (I will) and unnecessary animal s uffering.

[BlueZoo]

If you will enjoy someone else's illness, you are in need of help!