October is Vegetarian Awareness Month!

I can't resist plugging Vegetarian Awareness Month, an initiative of the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS). Non-vegetarians who pledge to go veg for a short duration can enter a random drawing for cash prizes. Vegetarian and vegan diets save animals' lives (over 50 animals a year per person on average), have proven health benefits, and help to preserve the earth. So while to me the #1 reason to adopt a meat-free diet is to not harm animals, these other important reasons also compel people to go vegetarian or vegan. You may have heard former President Bill Clinton talking about his adopting an almost vegan diet (still sometimes eating fish) in a successful effort to lose weight for his daughter Chelsea's recent wedding.

Indeed, vegetarianism continues to permeate our culture. Popular author and food activist Michael Pollan advises, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Pollan and Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser narrated the recent documentary Food, Inc., examining factory farming and its harmful effects on both animals and the environment. Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer's first foray into nonfiction, Eating Animals, inspired Natalie Portman to go from "a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist."

Here are a few books I recommend on veganism and animal rights:
-Farm Sanctuary / Gene Baur
-The kind diet / Alicia Silverstone
-The pig who sang to the moon / Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
-Veganomicon : the ultimate vegan cookbook / Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Farm Sanctuary

Animal rights is an important cause to me. I went vegetarian over a decade ago and never looked back. Ideally, I would be vegan and we'll see if I take the plunge in the future. In Farm Sanctuary, animal rights lobbyist and cofounder and president of Farm Sanctuary Gene Baur covers the significant legal victories he has achieved, stories of animal rescues, and the ugly truths of factory farming in the U.S. Even if you think you know all of the cruel practices involved in factory farming, Baur brings more of them to light. Each chapter ends with a profile of a rescued animal and that animal's unique story.

Baur is doing great work, and has achieved so much, yet laments repeatedly in the book that he can only save a small percentage of the nation's farm animals, which are adopted out or housed at one of the organization's two farms in Watkins Glen, New York and Orland, California. Obviously not being able to save more animals both dismays him and fuels his motivation to continue his advocacy. The rescues, combined with what he has done in changing hearts and minds about animals and food (as the subtitle says) make for an impressive list of accomplishments.