| Victor Sack |
The ethical calculus of foie gras
By Lawrence Downes -- The New York Times
NEW YORK The web of life can be a trap for the conscience. Try
twisting your mind around the human relationship with animals, and it
may quickly snarl in crisscrossing strands of compassion and guilt.
Contortions may ensue.
Consider, for example, the strange role reversals behind an effort in
Albany, New York's capital, to outlaw the force-feeding of waterfowl to
engorge their livers into foie gras. One Senate sponsor, John Bonacic,
is an upstate Republican who says he has no special sympathy for ducks
or geese, despite what his bill says. He says he wants only to help a
Sullivan County constituent - Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the nation's
leading producer of fresh foie gras, which has not only lobbied for the
bill, but also helped to write it.
Why? Michael Ginor, an owner of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, says he feels
an anti-foie-gras mood building and is willing to be put out of business
in New York if he can land on his feet somewhere else. The Bonacic bill,
unlike others lurking in the wings, would not take effect until 2016,
giving Ginor ample time to make other plans - moving to Canada, maybe -
without worrying about losing his market dominance or facing prosecution
for cruelty.
Animal welfare advocates have thus found themselves opposing a foie-gras
ban, which in this case, they say, gives a duck torturer a decade of
indulgence.
That bill and others like it are going nowhere this session, but they'll
be back. The battle against foie gras is being fought on many fronts -
California, the country's only other producer, enacted a law to
eventually ban its production and sale, as have other states and
countries.
To animal welfare groups, the obscenity of force-feeding, known by the
French word "gavage," is self-evident. But Ginor and his partner Izzy
Yanay, who runs the farm, accuse their critics of anthropomorphism and
ignorance of duck anatomy and behavior. They say the practice is as
benign as it is ancient, since waterfowl lack a gag reflex and have
sturdy throats that easily tolerate grains, grit, stones and inflexible
gavage tubes. To understand gavage, they say, is to accept it - as they
insist poultry researchers have, after examining birds for signs of
undue suffering during gavage and finding none.
I visited Hudson Valley Foie Gras recently, seeing gavage for the first
time. I saw no pain or panic in Yanay's ducks, no quacking or frenzied
flapping in the cool, dimly lighted open pens where a young woman with a
gavage funnel did her work. The birds submitted matter-of-factly to a
15-inch tube inserted down the throat for about three seconds,
delivering about a cup of corn pellets.
The practice, done three times a day for a month, followed by slaughter,
seemed neither particularly gentle nor particularly rough. It was
unnerving to see the tube going down, and late-stage ducks waddling
bulkily in their pens, but no more so than watching the epic gorging at
an all-you-can-eat buffet, where morbid obesity is achieved voluntarily,
with knife and fork.
The human appetite for sentient protein - food that flinches - is an
ethical puzzle that many of us solve by deciding not to think about it.
But those who lament the exploitation of God's creatures should be
careful not to spend all their pity in one place. There is, after all, a
vast universe of discomfort and death in U.S. agribusiness, which
processes 9 billion chickens and 98 million pigs a year, often in close
confinement, ending in slaughter on a monumental scale. Against this
backdrop - not to mention the misery of the veal pen, the sadness of the
pet shop and circus - the sum of animal unhappiness in Hudson Valley's
tidily run operation, which kills 250,000 ducks a year, seems trivial.
What seems brutal in isolation can be mitigated in context, as any
parents who have had a baby circumcised might tell you. Singling out the
foie-gras duck for salvation in Albany seems unwarranted and unwise,
particularly when doing so would threaten the livelihoods of farmworkers
and only drive foie-gras production somewhere else.
In Sullivan County - which could use all the economic activity it can
get, beyond the force-feeding of dollar bills into video slots at
Monticello Raceway - Hudson Valley Foie Gras gives a living to 175
people, mostly Latino immigrants. Many of them live in trailers on the
grounds and worship in a tiny chapel of crepe-paper streamers and
candles in a corner of a warehouse. Those who calculate the cruelty of
foie gras would do well to include them in the equation as well.
(Lawrence Downes is a member of the New York Times editorial board.)
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| Margaret Suran |
Victor Sack wrote:
> The ethical calculus of foie gras
>
> By Lawrence Downes -- The New York Times
>
>
> NEW YORK The web of life can be a trap for the conscience. Try
> twisting your mind around the human relationship with animals, and it
> may quickly snarl in crisscrossing strands of compassion and guilt.
> Contortions may ensue.
>
> Consider, for example, the strange role reversals behind an effort in
> Albany, New York's capital, to outlaw the force-feeding of waterfowl to
> engorge their livers into foie gras. One Senate sponsor, John Bonacic,
> is an upstate Republican who says he has no special sympathy for ducks
> or geese, despite what his bill says. He says he wants only to help a
> Sullivan County constituent - Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the nation's
> leading producer of fresh foie gras, which has not only lobbied for the
> bill, but also helped to write it.
>
> Why? Michael Ginor, an owner of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, says he feels
> an anti-foie-gras mood building and is willing to be put out of business
> in New York if he can land on his feet somewhere else. The Bonacic bill,
> unlike others lurking in the wings, would not take effect until 2016,
> giving Ginor ample time to make other plans - moving to Canada, maybe -
> without worrying about losing his market dominance or facing prosecution
> for cruelty.
>
> Animal welfare advocates have thus found themselves opposing a foie-gras
> ban, which in this case, they say, gives a duck torturer a decade of
> indulgence.
>
> That bill and others like it are going nowhere this session, but they'll
> be back. The battle against foie gras is being fought on many fronts -
> California, the country's only other producer, enacted a law to
> eventually ban its production and sale, as have other states and
> countries.
>
> To animal welfare groups, the obscenity of force-feeding, known by the
> French word "gavage," is self-evident. But Ginor and his partner Izzy
> Yanay, who runs the farm, accuse their critics of anthropomorphism and
> ignorance of duck anatomy and behavior. They say the practice is as
> benign as it is ancient, since waterfowl lack a gag reflex and have
> sturdy throats that easily tolerate grains, grit, stones and inflexible
> gavage tubes. To understand gavage, they say, is to accept it - as they
> insist poultry researchers have, after examining birds for signs of
> undue suffering during gavage and finding none.
>
> I visited Hudson Valley Foie Gras recently, seeing gavage for the first
> time. I saw no pain or panic in Yanay's ducks, no quacking or frenzied
> flapping in the cool, dimly lighted open pens where a young woman with a
> gavage funnel did her work. The birds submitted matter-of-factly to a
> 15-inch tube inserted down the throat for about three seconds,
> delivering about a cup of corn pellets.
>
> The practice, done three times a day for a month, followed by slaughter,
> seemed neither particularly gentle nor particularly rough. It was
> unnerving to see the tube going down, and late-stage ducks waddling
> bulkily in their pens, but no more so than watching the epic gorging at
> an all-you-can-eat buffet, where morbid obesity is achieved voluntarily,
> with knife and fork.
>
> The human appetite for sentient protein - food that flinches - is an
> ethical puzzle that many of us solve by deciding not to think about it.
> But those who lament the exploitation of God's creatures should be
> careful not to spend all their pity in one place. There is, after all, a
> vast universe of discomfort and death in U.S. agribusiness, which
> processes 9 billion chickens and 98 million pigs a year, often in close
> confinement, ending in slaughter on a monumental scale. Against this
> backdrop - not to mention the misery of the veal pen, the sadness of the
> pet shop and circus - the sum of animal unhappiness in Hudson Valley's
> tidily run operation, which kills 250,000 ducks a year, seems trivial.
>
> What seems brutal in isolation can be mitigated in context, as any
> parents who have had a baby circumcised might tell you. Singling out the
> foie-gras duck for salvation in Albany seems unwarranted and unwise,
> particularly when doing so would threaten the livelihoods of farmworkers
> and only drive foie-gras production somewhere else.
>
> In Sullivan County - which could use all the economic activity it can
> get, beyond the force-feeding of dollar bills into video slots at
> Monticello Raceway - Hudson Valley Foie Gras gives a living to 175
> people, mostly Latino immigrants. Many of them live in trailers on the
> grounds and worship in a tiny chapel of crepe-paper streamers and
> candles in a corner of a warehouse. Those who calculate the cruelty of
> foie gras would do well to include them in the equation as well.
>
> (Lawrence Downes is a member of the New York Times editorial board.)
Bubba, I saw the article in the N. Y. Times and as I was reading it, I
was wondering how you feel about the force feeding of ducks, which was
already a topic of conversation when I was a child in Europe. People
talked about it, but had no intention of giving up such a delicacy as
foie gras.
As long as I ask you about ducks, what are your thoughts when it comes
to circumcisions? After all, perhaps the powers that be in Albany
want to ban both and farm workers as well as Moils would lose their
livelihoods. :o(
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| Dan Abel |
In article <1gyzwyp.1pkswvjx7263iN%azazello@koroviev.de>,
azazello@koroviev.de (Victor Sack) wrote:
> The ethical calculus of foie gras
>
> By Lawrence Downes -- The New York Times
>
>
> NEW YORK The web of life can be a trap for the conscience. Try
> twisting your mind around the human relationship with animals, and it
> may quickly snarl in crisscrossing strands of compassion and guilt.
> Contortions may ensue.
>
> Consider, for example, the strange role reversals behind an effort in
> Albany, New York's capital, to outlaw the force-feeding of waterfowl to
> engorge their livers into foie gras.
My sister and daughter are vegetarians, for ethical reasons. My sister
has a sign in her kitchen, "Be kind to animals, don't eat them". I think
that kind of sums it up for me.
These ducks are going to be killed and eaten. How is 30 days of
overfeeding any worse than that? I don't see that they are being tortured
by being overfed. Any silly argument that it "isn't natural" is easily
countered by the argument that penning up animals isn't very natural
either.
--
Dan Abel
Sonoma State University
AIS
dabel@sonic.net
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| Victor Sack |
Margaret Suran <margaret@no.spam.for.me.invalid> wrote:
> Victor Sack wrote:
> > The ethical calculus of foie gras
> >
> > By Lawrence Downes -- The New York Times
> >
>
> Bubba, I saw the article in the N. Y. Times and as I was reading it, I
> was wondering how you feel about the force feeding of ducks, which was
> already a topic of conversation when I was a child in Europe.
I have enjoyed the article more for the way it was written than for its
well-known content. Still, I have to say that I largerly agree with its
premises.
> People
> talked about it, but had no intention of giving up such a delicacy as
> foie gras.
I have no such intention, either. Ever.
> As long as I ask you about ducks, what are your thoughts when it comes
> to circumcisions?
Circumcised ducks? Well, I don't know. Female circumcisions are
generally frowned upon and for a good reason. I'm sure a lot of ducks,
especially those of a politically correct persuasion, are going to gang
up on you for even thinking of such a thing. As to drakes, I don't
know, either. It would be a very delicate operation, in either case.
Perhaps castrating them instead would yield yet more interesting
results... Duck equivalent of capoun, anyone? It would also engender
(hah!) yet another "Duck testicles redux" thread, no doubt...
Bubba
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| Margaret Suran |
Victor Sack wrote:
> Margaret Suran <margaret@no.spam.for.me.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>>Victor Sack wrote:
>>
>>> The ethical calculus of foie gras
>>>
>>> By Lawrence Downes -- The New York Times
>>>
>>
>>Bubba, I saw the article in the N. Y. Times and as I was reading it, I
>>was wondering how you feel about the force feeding of ducks, which was
>>already a topic of conversation when I was a child in Europe.
OOPS, I made a mistake. Ducks were not force fed, only geese. They
were force fed, even if they were not raised for foie gras. Everybody
expected a large liver when purchasing a goose. The liver would be
large enough, so that a main course or at least an appetizer course
for a family of four could be made of it.
>
> I have enjoyed the article more for the way it was written than for its
> well-known content. Still, I have to say that I largerly agree with its
> premises.
>
>> People
>>talked about it, but had no intention of giving up such a delicacy as
>>foie gras.
>
> I have no such intention, either. Ever.
>
>>As long as I ask you about ducks, what are your thoughts when it comes
>>to circumcisions?
>
> Circumcised ducks? Well, I don't know. Female circumcisions are
> generally frowned upon and for a good reason. I'm sure a lot of ducks,
> especially those of a politically correct persuasion, are going to gang
> up on you for even thinking of such a thing. As to drakes, I don't
> know, either. It would be a very delicate operation, in either case.
> Perhaps castrating them instead would yield yet more interesting
> results... Duck equivalent of capoun, anyone? It would also engender
> (hah!) yet another "Duck testicles redux" thread, no doubt...
>
> Bubba
Bubba, I worded it badly. All I wanted to do was tease you and as so
many times before when I tried to get you, I am the one ending up with
egg on my face. It does not seem fair. :o(
We had potato salad for dinner yesterday. Marcel wanted cold chicken
with more of the salad for dinner tonight and I needed to stretch it,
as there was not enough for both of us. I had baby peas and diced
carrots left over from the day before and added them to the potatoes.
I also chopped an egg and a scallion, both the bulb and the green
stalk and mixed it in as well. A little bit of mayonnaise and the
salad that resulted was really good. I used to make something similar
as a luncheon dish, adding diced beef tongue, diced chicken and diced
ham and chopped celery and chopped bell peppers. If the weather stays
so hot and humid, I may make this salad for dinner one night. It's
what we called Russian Salad, but the recipe you gave me sounds much
better. Without the crayfish.
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