Working Group on Right Relationship with Animals Interchange Reports

The text of recently received Interchange Reports are below, with the most recently received at the top and older reports below. To jump to a particular report, simply click the year listed below.

Spring 2019 Interchange
“Two Book” Project Announced

The BYM Working Group on Right Relationship with Animals invites all members and attenders in the yearly meeting to participate in our “Two Book” project. We invite you to gather together with others in your Meetings to read and discuss one or both of two books we have carefully selected and highly recommend.

The gathered meeting at Annual Session last August united behind a minute to encourage people to “discuss how to extend our love and compassion to animals, and to consider their welfare when making food choices.” In order to facilitate those discussions, members of our Working Group sorted through many books and found two that seem most appropriate for our setting, being readable, informative, and plain-spoken with a minimum of hyperbole.

In past years, Yearly Meeting Committees have invited Meetings to participate in “One Book” projects, which Meetings have been free to choose to do or not. As our experience with The New Jim Crow illustrated, there is great power in joining together to wrestle with the pressing issues of our time. We suggest reading either book, depending on the genre you prefer – both provide the same general background about the environmental impact of animal agriculture and pose the same ethical questions about the way animals are treated.

• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer uses personal stories to cover the material. Notably for the purpose of Friends within BYM, the book includes a discussion of the common goals of small farmers and vegetarians to reduce animal suffering and on their strong differences of opinion about how to go about it.
• A Plea for the Animals by Matthieu Ricard takes a more intellectual approach to the many ethical questions inherent in raising and killing animals. The European perspective of the author adds an extra interest.

Both books necessarily include details about how animals are raised and killed. Eating Animals covers this information more thoroughly (and thus may require more skimming by people who find the information disturbing.)

Spring 2018 Interchange

Members of our Working Group have been reaching out across BYM to season a minute on our relationship to animals used for food. We are available to lead discussions and worship sharing at local Meetings. For anyone who is unable to attend one of these discussions before Annual Session, we suggest reading Pendle Hill Pamphlet #440: Enlarging Our Circle of Love.