Vegetarian Star

Jonathan Safran Foer. Credit: David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

“Sex feels good, but we don’t go around having sex with anyone that attracts our attention. We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don’t. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line… I don’t mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit.”

—-Jonathan Safran Foer, answering the question of “What do I say to the idiotic line, “But they taste good” ???” during a online discussion of his book, Eating Animals.

Yeah, it never pays to be a meat slut. Ruins your health and reputation.

via washingtonpost.com

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Jonathan Safran Foer‘s trailer for Eating Animals features the very creature Jonathan used to despise–the dog!

“I had a particular lack of enthusiasm for dogs—inspired, in large part, by a related fear that I inherited from my mother, which she inherited from my grandmother,” Jonathan said.

Jonathan discusses french kisses with the dog, dinners with grandma and how his wife’s pregnancy with his first son prompted him to write his latest book in the trailer.

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

Jonathan Safran Foer was the guest of honor at this year’s Farm Sanctuary Celebration for Turkeys.

Jonathan read some parts from his latest book, Eating Animals, and took the time to talk to green gossip website Ecorazzi.

Here are a few thoughts Jonathan gave to Ecorazzi:

On Farm Sanctuary:
Farm Sanctuary was the first place I went when I did my research for this book. I had a really wonderful day. In many ways it established a tone for the rest of my research, which was that these issues all depend on how you tell them—how you present them. It’s not the case that the world needs new values, it just needs a new story—a story that more accurately reflects what’s going on in the world and more directly connects it to who we already are, not who we want to be, just who we already are.

On what famous person he’d like to see go veg this Thanksgiving:
I don’t know if I think of it in quite those terms. Like I was saying, there’s something that seems dichotomist about that—turkey or no turkey. Look, someone like Glenn Beck could not have a turkey and that’s fine, but what I would so strongly prefer is that he had a week-long series about animal agriculture in America. I have no interest in prying a turkey from his hands. Frankly, he could do so much more good in the world then his individual choice.

Read the entire interview with Jonathan at Ecorazzi.com.

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

Eating Animals author Jonathan Safran Foer was interviewed by Kerry Trueman of the Huffington Post recently.

Jonathan did extensive research before writing Eating Animals, primarily investigating factory farms and the conditions that animals raised for food endure.

As expected, some farms wouldn’t let Jonathan past the front door.

A few excerpts:

KT: Did you have any real expectation that Tyson–the world’s largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork, as you note in your book–would agree to give you a tour of any of its farms?

JSF: To be honest, I did, because I know that they have “show farms”. All these companies have show farms. I thought I would at least get a response–you know, “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to show you the farms because of biosecurity, but we’d be happy to give you these brochures.”

The thing that really surprised me was the total lack of a response. I didn’t get anywhere with anybody.

KT: And now, of course, after the fact, the industrial livestock industry’s accusing you of not doing your homework, which is really funny, because when they had the opportunity to throw open the doors–

JSF: –Yeah, so let’s do it! Let’s do the homework now, it’s not too late! Seriously, I would be so happy to revise my book if they showed me something else. But they’re not going to show me anything.

You can at least do your homework on Jonathan by reading the entire interview at Huffingtonpost.com.

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

Author Jonathan Safran Foer says that for people, including himself, going vegetarian is a lot like Mark Twain described quitting smoking.

“Mark Twain said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things one can do; he did it all the time. I would add vegetarianism to the list of easy things. In high school I became a vegetarian more times than I can now remember…”

Whether you’re trying to go vegetarian, vegan, or flex the process can result in multiple attempts to “get it right” whether the failings are brought on by cravings, environment, financial issues or pure convenience.

The strictest of vegetarians would like to call anyone who even ingests the occasional animal byproduct no longer vegetarian, but is that the best approach to take?

Jonathan gives his take on alternet.org:

“But I wonder if more of the difficulty doesn’t come from the ways that we talk and think about change. When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. It’s a strange formulation, and it’s distracting. (Those who profit from animal suffering and environmental destruction want us to think in dichotomies, rather than practical realities.) Imagine someone asking you, “Are you an environmentalist or not?” For most of us, caring about the environment isn’t an on-off switch, but a set of daily choices that we try to respond to as best we can. I buy energy-efficient products, and turn off lights when leaving a room, and recycle and so on. But I also fly on airplanes. Does my occasional flying completely undermine my identity as someone who cares and tries? Should I, faced with my inability to live consistently, make no efforts to live better?”

Is being a vegetarian a continuous “process” that none of us should expect to get 100% correct?

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

A smart aleck by the name of Foster Kamer wrote a post for Gawker.com on some alternative ways to spend you time instead of reading Jonathan Safran Foer‘s latest book, Eating Animals.

Here are just a few things Kamer says you can do besides read Jonathan’s book:

6. Eat some tacos. Pork tacos.

7. Eat some bacon (but don’t be obnoxious about it).

8. Eat a bacon cheeseburger.

Number 11 on Kamer’s list is the taker–“STFU” (Shut The (Expletive) Up).

How nice.

Eating meat must hamper your creativity skills because “burger” is way overused on the list. C’mon. Kamer could have at least branched out and said something like, “Build a model White Castle restaurant from old newspaper, then recycle it.”

At least that would have made the part time, greenie vegetarians a little happier.

Seriously, if the only way to respond to an opinion that’s different than yours is with cutesy, junior high school retorts, you had better not use that “humans can eat meat because we’re superior to animals” argument.

The number one thing to do instead of writing a nasty column on why people shouldn’t read Foer’s book?

1. STFU and (tie)
2. Read the book. Then STFU.

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

“I spent the first 26 years of my life disliking animals. I thought of them as bothersome, dirty, unapproachably foreign, frighteningly unpredictable, and plain old unnecessary. I had a particular lack of enthusiasm for dogs—inspired, in large part, by a related fear that I inherited from my mother, which she inherited from my grandmother. As a child I would agree to go over to friends’ houses only if they confined their dogs in some other room. If a dog approached in the park, I’d become hysterical until my father hoisted me onto his shoulders. I didn’t like watching television shows that featured dogs. I didn’t understand—I disliked—people who got excited about dogs. It’s possible that I even developed a subtle prejudice against the blind. And then one day I became a person who loved dogs. I became a dog person.”

“The first full chapter of my book explores our divergent attitudes toward dogs and fish—fish being at the far end of the spectrum of our regard. I write about a simple trick that backyard astronomers use: If you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs and their relationship to the animals we eat is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.”

—-author Jonathan Safran Foer, during an interview about his latest book, Eating Animals.

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Farm Sanctuary "Celebration For Turkeys"

Best selling author Jonathan Safran Foer will be the guest of honor at Farm Sanctuary Celebration FOR Turkeys on November 22 from noon to 5PM.

Jonathan will be reading parts from his latest book, Eating Animals.

The Celebration FOR Turkeys features Thanksgiving dinner sans the real turkey catered by vegan restaurant Candle 79. In addition, there will be a silent auction to benefit the sanctuary’s animals.

Russell Simmons is expected to give a presentation as well and other celebrity attendees on the roster include Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, Mary and Peter Max and Ally Sheedy.

Tickets are $150 per person and seats are expected to fill fast, so reserve your ticket today and visit farmsanctuary.org for more information.

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