Writer Jonathan Safran Foer's been getting a lot of media attention lately for the just published Eating Animals, his first book-length piece of nonfiction, which is very much against the eponymous activity. I haven't read it, and I don't expect that I (or most SuperVegan readers) will learn much from it that we don't already know about what's wrong with eating animals. This is not a book written for vegans. But it's a book that vegans ought to have some understanding of.

For better or worse, an established literary novelist like Foer can get people to pay attention to what's wrong with factory farming in a way that more academic or of-the-movement authors such as Peter Singer or Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson cannot. And Foer is relatively folksy and accessible (if not artless) compared to someone like J.M. Coetzee, whose arguments in defense of animals are unapologetically over most people's heads, and who isn't about to do a bunch of press interviews.

Foer finds lots of problems with industrial animal agriculture, and with eating meat in a general ethical sense, but he does not come down against non-meat or non-food animal products. This is a book about meat. That's got a lot of vegans understandably perturbed--an influential guy sets up a strong argument for many tenets of veganism, yet fails to go there. Mainstream media may not care, but it's important for us vegans to understand why Foer isn't vegan, and how he feels about veganism.

Josh Hooten of Herbivore attended a talk by Foer last night at Powell's Books in Portland, OR. Hooten is the right kind of vegan, and he wrote a great report/defense on the talk (which he posted on Facebook, and graciously allowed me to republish here.) Here's the first and last sentences, and you can read the whole thing below.

Foer isn't an animal rights person, he is coming from outside our community and perhaps that is why he is getting the attention he's getting for his new book Eating Animals.
...
As a messenger getting people to think about this stuff for the first time, I think he's amazing.

As readers know, October was the third annual Vegan Month of Food. Started by celebrity chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz, vegan mofos everywhere posted daily blogs in celebration of our favorite subject — food! Vegan Month of Food kicked off with World Vegetarian Day and ends with a bang tomorrow at the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. In addition to this sandwich of events, here is a completely subjective roundup of things that made October one mofo of a month!

In the Mainstream

Vegan for the Animals
Author Jonathan Safran Foer made a big splash with a taster from his new book Eating Animals, published as a feature article in the NY Times Magazine's Food issue. After reading Eating Animals, actress Natalie Portman went vegan and announced her reasons in her essay "Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan" for the Huffington Post (that counts as a MoFo blog, right?). Blink 182 drummer (and rehabilitated puppy-juicer) Travis Barker has once again seen the light. He says he's back to being vegetarian and "almost full blown vegan now."

Vegan for the Environment
We've been saying it all along but it looks like we may finally be arriving at a tipping point. Even mainstream sources and enviro orgs are agreeing that eating meat causes global warming and going veg reduces your carbon footprint. Omnivore's Dilemma author and foodie darling Michael Pollan stuck his foot in it by stating: "A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius." Then retracted the statement the next day. I thought it was fuzzy math to begin with (here's an interview with one of the original researchers and number crunchers), but I hope his blunder doesn't cloud the issue, which is that vegans have a substantially lighter overall effect on the environment than meat-eaters. Duh. Joining the bandwagon, the WorldWatch Institute's latest magazine asks the question, "Carnivorism and climate change: Is it worse than we thought?"

I've got Peter Gabriel's song "Big Time" stomping through my head. Here's why: The all-vegan cookbook by Chef Tal Ronnen, Conscious Cook: Delicious Meatless Recipes to Change the Way You Eat (which was released on October 6), is now number three on Amazon's bestseller list and number two on Barnes & Noble's.

I'm on my way, I'm making it: Big Time!

Chef Tal is beloved by many, but perhaps the most influential in the Tal Fanclub is Oprah Winfrey. (I'm not one to really care about celebrities, but even I admit she's pretty big-time.) Conscious Cook was featured on her show yesterday. For those not in the know, Tal Ronnen was Oprah's personal chef for her 21-day vegan 'cleanse'. Check out today's headline on her home page under the Food section--there's a picture of Chef Tal and the headline: "Go vegetarian with recipes from The Conscious Cook."

Chef Tal is a vegan evangelist through food. Aside from being a creative chef who rubs elbows with the highest echelons of celebrity, Ronnen serves as an adviser to college and corporate cafeterias on veganizing their menus and has worked with major gourmet vegan restaurants (read his official bio). He also helped in the development of the new vegan meat-replacer Gardein (check out SuperVegan's reviews of Gardein).

For many of us it's difficult enough to describe our vegetarianism without roaring into a heartened polemic against eating animals. A poetic narrative of our acquaintance with animals, both as food and as sentient creatures, that neutralizes the cultural and sentimental fascinations with food that buoy arguments for meat consumption can be impossibly elusive. But that's what novelist Jonathan Safran Foer gives us in an October 7 New York Times Magazine article, "Against Meat," adapted from his upcoming book, Eating Animals.

Foer's is a familiar story — of knowing that it's "wrong to hurt animals," while following fleeting and often conflicting eating philosophies that struggle at times to justify, ignore the consequences of, and scorn eating animals. From age nine he tows the line between passionate vegetarianism and a sort-of-vegetarianism of convenience until, as a new dad, he has to make a dietary choice for his kids.

The path toward that eventual commitment to vegetarianism winds around Foer's grandmother and her singular dish, chicken and carrots. As a vegetarian, what do you do with your beloved memories when they're inextricably bound to meat?

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of sushi “lunch dates” with my mom, and eating my dad’s turkey burgers with mustard and grilled onions at backyard celebrations, and of course my grandmother’s chicken with carrots. Those occasions simply wouldn’t have been the same without those foods — and that is important. To give up the taste of sushi, turkey or chicken is a loss that extends beyond giving up a pleasurable eating experience. Changing what we eat and letting tastes fade from memory create a kind of cultural loss, a forgetting. But perhaps this kind of forgetfulness is worth accepting — even worth cultivating (forgetting, too, can be cultivated). To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

And as simply as simple can be, Foer begins to tactfully, even beautifully, unravel the knotty relationship between memory — individual and collective — and meat. Here's hoping for more of that in Eating Animals (Little, Brown), which publishes November 2.

This is one of Supervegan's posts for Vegan MoFo 2009.

Saturday, I was thrilled to see actress Alicia Silverstone give culinary demonstrations followed by a discussion as part of the Food Network's New York City Wine & Food Festival presented by Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure magazines, Whole Foods Market and hosted by and benefiting the Food Bank For New York City and Share Our Strength.

The veg star tied her hair back and walked us through how to prepare recipes from her new book, The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet, set for release this Tuesday, October 13.

In her book, Alicia discusses the powerful life-altering choice to become cruelty-free and the breakthroughs she experienced. She also addresses common nutritional concerns faced by those new to a plant-based. The book covers every nutritional base, from the standard protein and calcium issues and beyond.

Lantern Books is turning ten! Celebrate a decade of fantastic vegetarian and animal advocacy books (and the new release, An Offering of Leaves) at Lantern's tenth anniversary party, this Thursday at Jivamukti Yoga Center.

The essential info: it's 1) free and 2) catered with delicious vegan food from Jivamukti's cafe. What more could you ask?

When: Thursday, October 8, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
Where: Jivamukti Yoga
841 Broadway, 2nd Floor
(at Union Square, just below 14th St.)

Lantern was instrumental in getting SuperVegan off the ground (and is still my day job). We're grateful for the support and wish them a happy anniversary.

Find this and other awesome vegan events on SuperVegan's NYC Events Calendar.

Author, filmmaker and parenting educator Amy Hatkoff recently turned her attention to the plight of farmed animals in the United States. Her new book, The Inner World of Farm Animals: Their Amazing Intellectual, Emotional, and Social Capacities, is part coffee table book, part scientific treatise and part love story. Amy graciously took some time out from her busy touring schedule to answer our questions.

SuperVegan: Hi, Amy. Thanks so much for talking with SuperVegan!

Your background is in family and children’s issues. What made you decide to write a book about farm animals?

Amy Hatkoff: I was riding the Third Avenue bus in NYC and saw a sign about farm animals. I don’t remember exactly what the sign was, but it depicted their suffering. I felt like I’d been struck by a lightning bolt. I had an overwhelming feeling that I had to speak up for farm animals, showing how aware and capable they are. I’d done something similar for babies in my book You Are My World: How a Parent’s Love Shapes a Baby’s Mind. However, I didn’t really know very much about farm animals and was secretly hoping the idea would go away. But the vision held on tight and kept tugging at me. So as soon as I finished a project, I got on the Internet and began my exploration into The Inner World of Farm Animals.

SV: The book is filled with beautiful photos. Did you have a chance to meet many of the animals who appear in it?

AH: One month before my deadline, I visited Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in upstate New York. There I had the amazing experience of meeting several of the animals pictured in the book, including Dylan, Olivia, Ralphie, Elvis, Jack, Felix and Albie. I also had the pleasure of meeting Bob Esposito, whose photographs are featured prominently in the book. Bob is a genius at capturing the personalities and souls of the animals. I have since been back to Woodstock and have visited Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen. Being with the animals is a profound experience. I hope more people get to visit a sanctuary and spend time with these amazing creatures.

With the recent release of the film Julie / Julia, there's been much talk of Julia Child as of late; Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking even topped the New York Times Best Seller List- 48 years after it was first published. Even SuperVegan had a brush with Julia recently; when our very own Andrea Wachner was inspired to veganize a recipe from Le Cordon Bleu Cookbook after viewing the film.

And now, in a rather fitting full circle (well, at least according to our narrative) we come to find out that Lisa Landsverk, the new owner of Julia Child's Cambridge home, is not only vegetarian but an animal rights activist too.

In this Boston Globe piece Ms. Landsverk is profiled and takes to the task of veganizing one of Ms. Child's recipes.

Bon Appetit indeed!

Have you seen Julie & Julia? I took a gang of girls to see it and as we were walking into the theater someone called out in passing, "It's gonna make you hungry!" Now, if you're the type of vegan who is repulsed by the site of lobsters being given a death bath or a duck being bone raped, then you might not feel like eating for a day or seven. But me? I'm highly food suggestible, I love a challenge, and came home to find a copy of Le Cordon Bleu Cookbook, translated into English, a language I pretend to speak, already in my possession. It might be a total cliché that I was inspired to take to my kitchen (and now blog about it) by a movie about a girl who was inspired to cook (in order blog about said cooking) by Julia Child who was inspired by the lack of French cookbooks in English to attend Le Cordon Bleu. So be it. (As our friends over at Quarrygirl remind us, clichés are funny!)

After flipping through the book, two immediate contenders presented themselves, so I started easy. First up, Boulangère Potatoes (minus the accompanying stuffed turkey legs):

Former Sanskrit professor and Freudian analyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a prolific author who has focused on animal issues in many of his books, including The Cat Who Came in From the Cold and Altruistic Armadillos to Zenlike Zebras. In his latest, The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food, Masson examines factory farming, the animals who are exploited as a result and the human denial that allows it to continue.

SV: Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with SuperVegan. I was very excited to read The Face on Your Plate, especially after I saw the video of the reading you gave in San Francisco back in March.

You were raised vegetarian, started eating flesh when you became a Freudian analyst, then returned to vegetarianism while writing When Elephants Weep. You then went vegan while researching The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, a result of visiting dairy farms and egg-laying facilities. Do you think you would have gone vegan had you not seen what you did?

JMM: Well, I knew about the horrors before and did not doubt that raising animals for milk or eggs is terribly cruel and cannot be otherwise. But seeing it with my own eyes really did have an enormous impact on me.

SV: Since most people will never have the opportunity to see a slaughterhouse or an animal agriculture facility, how can we open their eyes to the horrors of the industry and that it’s within their power to change it by going vegan? Is that the goal of the book?

JMM: Yes, that is the goal of the book. I am hoping that the people who read it will become convinced that I am telling the truth and will save themselves the horror of seeing the animals suffer and simply go vegan. It really is the only logical conclusion to the information now freely available to everyone.