Thank you so much to Lizka for encouraging me in this post.
I'm so excited to share my book that will be of great interest to EA folks was just released by Lantern. The Farm Animal Movement: Effective Altruism, Venture Philanthropy, and the Fight to End Factory Farming in America tells the stories of this exhilarating moment in our movement in a way that I hope will inspire millennials to dedicate their careers and resources to EA and to helping end farm animal suffering. The chapters are:
- Introduction: Ending the World’s Worst Suffering
- Numbers Don’t Lie: Effective Altruism and Venture Philanthropy
- Political Power: Family Farmers Versus Big Meat
- Vegans Making Laws: From California to Capitol Hill
- Building a Movement: Mercy for Animals and Emotional Intelligence
- Betrayal of Trust: Inside the Humane Society’s #MeToo Scandal
- “We are hurting so much”: Racism and ‘Color-blindness’
- Animal Law and Legal Education: Pathbreakers and Millennials
- Dreamers: The Good Food Institute and Clean Meat
The target audience is people who are EA- or animal-aligned (students, career-changers, donors, volunteers) but who haven't yet found their niche. Hopefully it will be helpful for EAs as a recruitment tool. It's the first book to focus exclusively on EA and farm animals, so I hope it makes a difference!
I feel like the movement needed a book that would be useful for laypeople, advocates and scholars. The book has a popular, engaging writing style with academic methods and footnotes. I am thrilled at how the book turned out with the insight and help from the team at Lantern. All credit goes to them for the beautiful cover design.
I am so proud to be a member of this movement and grateful to all who participated in this project (EA Forum commenters, you know who you are :) ). Thank you for the opportunity to post on this Forum.
Thank you for writing this book, I'm looking forward to reading it. How does it contrast with jacy reese's the end of animal farming? I notice that it's focused on america, but would you still recommend it for advocates in other countries?
Thank you! Jacy's book is quite good. I would describe his as focused on clean and plant-based meat. His work was very helpful for my chapter on clean meat. My take is broader and considers a number of facets of the movement beyond the tech side. I have nothing bad to say about The End of Animal Farming but my book I think does a good job of telling the stories about activists throughout the farm animal welfare and rights communities through the lens of EA.
It is focused on America so I probably wouldn't recommend it to folks based outside the U.S. unless they have an interest in the U.S.!
Wow, this is amazing! Thank you for putting in the time and effort to write it. I just ordered a copy for the Effective Altruism at Georgia Tech library. Can’t wait to read it!
Thank you, Pete, that is so kind!
Wow, this is amazing news. Thank you so much for all the hard work that must have gone into writing this book, I can’t wait to read it !
(Small, very reluctant point of correction: I think unfortunately, “The good it promises, the harm it does” is probably the first book focusing on EA and FAW (assuming we don’t consider Animal Liberation to be a book about EA, which I think is fair)).
I think there are other earlier examples, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Animal_Farming
Kaleem - thank you so much for your comment. I think you make a good point. I read "The Good It Promises" and I think there are some helpful chapters, but it has a number of essays not really about farm animals. And as Lorenzo notes there are many other books that discuss EA and farm animals. I thought The End of Animal Farming was good and cite it in my book. I just thought a good survey of EA and farm animals would be helpful for folks. In any event, I really hope my book inspires other people to write even better books!