Vegetarian Star

Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Authors@Google discussion covers all the points you would expect from the younger generation’s father of factory farming education on how everyone should reduce their meat intake–from less livestock emitting gases into the environment to the public health crisis being created by the use of so many antibiotics on farms to the cruel and painful ways animals are treated.

You can’t read through Eating Animals, read an interview or listen to a speech by Foer without realizing you should at least partake in Meatless Monday. But what about those who are afraid to call themselves the big “V” word in fear of criticism when they fail?

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Credit: CBC Radio

Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Safran Foer have taken a stab at the meat versus vegetarian debate before on Eric Ripert’s Turn and Burn. Now, the chef and author are together again for a debate posted at CBC Radio.

Foer’s primary reason for going vegetarian was because of the conditions of factory farms, citing they go against the values most people hold, whether they’re vegetarian or not.

Bourdain kept referencing to eating meat as a way to welcome other people and experiencing cultures outside your home. So while being vegetarian at home is okay, he’d prefer people not turn down meat dishes as guests.

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Credit David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

“A lot of the reason is the attitude that if you slip up, there is no use trying it anymore. Imagine applying that to anything else: truth telling or being kind to strangers. If every time we slipped up, we said, “I’m done trying,” then what would we be left with?”

–author Jonathan Safran Foer, when asked why people become ex-vegetarians.

Do you agree with his answer?

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Credit David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

Jonathan Safran Foer is on tour to promote his only work of non-fiction, Eating Animals, a book that explores factory farming and vegetarianism.

Foer’s stop at Harvard was accompanied by an interview with the The Crimson, where Foer gave a statistic about who’s going meatless in the college population.

“Eighteen percent of college students describe themselves as vegetarians,” Foer said. “There are more vegetarians than Catholics in college. In college campuses, it is so unremarkable to be a vegetarian. It’s a kind of aspirational identity. That’s the reason to be most hopeful.”

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Credit David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

Jonathan Safran Foer has an interview with Good.is where he recalls a recent poll he read that discovered most people are willing for fork over extra dough for what goes on their fork.

“I just read a recent poll that 70 percent of Americans are willing to spend more money for more ethically produced food. This isn’t San Francisco or New York; it’s the whole country. That’s an amazing number. People care about this stuff.”

The study, more than likely is from the national survey conducted by Context Marketing, which not only found 7 out of 10 people willing to pay more for ethical food, but 70% believe it’s better for the environment, 60% believe it’s healthier and 58% believe it’s safer to consume.

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When author Jonathan Safran Foer appeared on The Ellen Show, a nine year old girl said reading the book with her mother had inspired her to start drinking soy milk and buying cage-free eggs. She also asked if he planned to write a similar book aimed at children. The answer was no, he was only interested in writing fiction from there on out.

Fortunately, there are dozens of books aimed at children and adolescents that focus on vegetarian living and values.

This is Why We Don’t Eat Animals is one that teaches the relationship between food at mealtime and animal suffering and environment issues if that food is meat or dairy.

Other children’s books that contain vegetarian related themes include Hope, based on a true story of a pig found in a dumpster that was rescued and taken to a farm sanctuary. ‘Twas the Night before Thanksgiving features the story of school children who rescue eight would be dinner turkeys during a class field trip to a farm.

These and other books can be found on a list at humaneeducationteacher.org.

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WJW Fox 8 “Hollywood and Dine” feature has Natalie Portman discussing how she’s getting into the local and slow foods movement, frequenting restaurants that use vegetables from their own farm.

The Mossman then makes an eggplant dish he thinks Portman would love.

Better hold off the cheese next time, considering Portman turned vegan for good after reading Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Eating Animals.

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Credit David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

So you love the taste of a well done steak or a ham and cheese sandwich.

You don’t give a flying saucer about animals and their pain and suffering.

Why should you make an effort to eat less meat, especially factory farmed meat?

Well, you don’t really want everyone in the office (not even the co-workers you don’t like) to come down with Swine Flu next year, do you?

Jonathan Safran Foer, author of his book on factory farming, Eating Animals, has interviewed with Vegetarian Times in the May/June 2010 issue where he gives this argument for those who aren’t interested one bit in “animal” welfare and rights.

“We known where the flu came from: it came from factory farms in North Carolina. The link between flu pandemics and animal agriculture is not an opinion. It’s a well documented fact by scientific organizations that have no interest whatsoever in promoting vegetarianism.”

Swine flu, of which cases were seen in humans over the past few years, has traditionally been confined to outbreaks among pigs.

Like other viruses, it sometimes develops an affinity for a different host.

According to Wired, in 1998, scientists found a strain of swine flu in U.S. factory farms that spread quickly, and experts warned then it could one day evolve the ability to infect humans, resulting in a pandemic.

Bob Martin, former executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Farm Production and a critic of factory farms, called these environments, “super-incubators for viruses.”

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