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Foie Gras Fatwah Expands
Friday, May 4, 2007

The foie gras fatwah that we discussed here a few months ago, when it reached Chicago, is now promised for L.A. in 2012. (By the way, this is not HDTV, where all of television has to be shot on new equipment. Why set the ban so far out?) Anyway, given all the blowback, can you make a PC foie gras? The NYT explores:

It may make the birds feel better. But yet to be seen is whether it will please the animal rights activists who helped California enact a law that will ban foie gras starting in 2012, got Chicago to outlaw the sale of foie gras last year and are threatening similar action in other parts of the country.
Mr. Brock and other producers in the United States and Europe have been trying to find ways to make foie gras that will overcome the objections of those who see their work as an act of cruelty while still pleasing chefs and connoisseurs.

But unlike producers of beef, pork and chicken, who can respond to criticism of their practices by returning to kinder, preindustrial methods of raising cattle, pigs and chickens, foie gras producers have no such bucolic past to fall back on. Since the time of ancient Egyptians, making foie gras has involved doing something unnatural to ducks or geese: fattening their livers by force-feeding them, typically, nowadays, for the last 12 to 21 days of their lives.

Opponents say the procedure using feeding tubes is painful and sickens the birds. Foie gras advocates say the birds do not mind because their gullets are naturally expandable, to let them gorge before migrating.

Labels: Food

Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM
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