There has been an extraordinary amount of reaction to Jonathan Safran Foer's recently published book, Eating Animals.

The folk who lurk around Word of Mouth will already be familiar with the arguments he raises on animal welfare, the evils of industrial farming, and the environmental cost of our meat consumption, some of which we discussed in yesterday's post by Alex Renton. But Safran Foer has succeeded in bringing the conversation into the American mainstream, sparking conversions to vegetarianism through chat show and radio appearances (here discussing the proliferation of H1N1 and its links to a farm in North Carolina on the Ellen Degeneres show), forums and, of course, what it all comes back to; the grim picture painted in the book.

As a novelist perhaps what Safran Foer brings to the conversation is a highly personal telling of the story, in his background and evolving philosophy, and in the inclusion of other voices throughout, asking us to start at the beginning in considering our relationship to the animals we rear for food. His descriptive powers are also well employed in highlighting the horrors of intensive farming.

Take this excerpt which looks at the often inefficient slaughter of cattle, which means "animals are bled, skinned, and dismembered while conscious." Or this one, which examines the cramped, alien environment of a turkey farm, complete with contaminated chilling baths ("faecal soup"), and in a look at aquaculture - or underwater factory farming, he pulls no punches: "No fish gets a good death. Not a ­single one. You never have to wonder if the fish on your plate had to suffer. It did."

I'll hand you over to the author to introduce himself and the web chat, which will start at 1pm but you can, of course, post questions now. For those with a literary bent, Jonathan will also be discussing his novel Everything is Illuminated with John Mullan on 2 March in a Guardian book club event - full details are here.

A word from Jonathan Safran Foer

I am very much looking forward to this conversation. As I hope is obvious to those of you who have read any of Eating Animals, while I come to this topic with some strongly held beliefs, I appreciate not only the very personal stakes, but the complexity of what we choose to eat and why. The conversation about meat is as important as any conversation being had right now. (With regard to the environment, human health and animal welfare, it is more important.) But it's a conversation that doesn't work (is counter-productive and positively no fun) when it veers toward argument and attack.

I have never had any interest in trying to persuade someone to share my values, largely because it's so often obnoxious and so rarely works, but even more because in this case it's unnecessary. The values that would lead one away from factory-farmed meat are all but universally held. While some of you will certainly disagree (and strongly) with others, I doubt anyone here wants a farm system that is, according to the United Nations, one of the top two or three causes of every significant environmental problem, locally and globally.

Does anyone want food that is (and unnecessarily) the number one cause of global warming? Does anyone want to make animals suffer? If we take these agreements as our starting point - rather than the strange and not-particularly relevant questions about the "rightness" and "wrongness" of eating animals - I am quite sure we will make progress and quickly.

So on that happy note, let's begin ...