Foie Gras Battle Moves to Illinois

Apparently Illinois is the next big battlefield in the foie gras wars. Oregon narrowly missed being one of the casualties after a bill passed in the Senate last spring. For those of us who enjoy foie gras, luckily it died in the House. (Interestingly, I could find no news articles about its death, only its birth.)

The movement to ban foie gras got a meaningful boost in credibility when activists, supported by celebrities, successfully nixed its production and sale in California last year. Both in California and Oregon, legal methods of removing the meat from menus were preceded by less honorable tactics, including false reservations and showing disturbing videos to diners through restaurant windows.

But the methods of some should not be evidence to the rightness of the arguments, one way or the other. The question is whether the production of foie gras is cruel, or whether it's cruel enough to justify its ban.

My answer: I'm not sure.

Those of us who ever owned a cow (or a goldfish, for that matter) know that animals will eat beyond any reasonable limit. I can remember my dad essentially having to syphon grain from the stomachs of our cow (named, ehem, Taco, btw) because someone had left the doors open to the barn where the feed was stored and he had gorged himself. So when opponents and activists emphasize "force-feeding", I'm a little suspicious.

When the issue came up on eGullet, slkinsey put it this way:

Now, of course, there always comes the question of what is acceptable treatment for any animal raised for slaughter. For this, it helps if one has an understanding of the animal's physiology and, to the extent possible, psychology. The esophagus of a duck, for example, is lined with something very similar to the material our fingernails are made of. And, of course, ducks and geese have a natural gorging instinct. One reads of ducks gathering around the feeder and standing in line to be gorged. Is this unnatural? Yea, to a certain extent. So is feeding grain to cows. Domesticating an animal and raising it for slaughter is inherrently "unnatural." But it's not clear to me that doing any of these "unnatural" things necessarily makes the animal "suffer." Could the gorging method be done in a way that was inhumane? Certainly. But that doesn't mean that the gorging method is inherrently inhumane. So I say it is a flawed premise to declare foie gras production inhumane based simply on the gorging method. This would be inhumane for humans, and probably for most mammals, but not for ducks and geese.

I, too, have no doubt that animals can be fed cruelly. Animals are treated cruelly all the time and in a myriad of ways. Instead of banning foie gras outright, I'd rather see a bill that addresses livestock cruelty in general, setting what are acceptable limits, and then viewing specific cases in light of that. Hell, there might be such laws on the books already.

As it is, the anti-foie gras movement seems like a bit of grandstanding. Politicians can bellyache about foie gras with little worry about offending their constituents, while ingratiating themselves to an increasingly powerful special interest. The numbers of people who eat foie gras -- let alone know what it is -- are few. The numbers of people who truly depend on it for their livelihood are even fewer. Without actually affecting (or effecting) much, a politician can prove that he's a good egg, a friend to animals, an enemy to all that's inhumane.

But it's just show. Bring up a bill that would severely limit Oregon dairies or chicken farms and you'd see blowhards on both sides of the aisle proving that they are friends to farmers, ranchers, restaurants, and those that depend on cheap groceries from Wal-Mart.

So while I'm torn on the state of modern animal husbandry, and even the merits of foie gras production, I see the activists' efforts as largely wasted. They're content with shallow wins for a bit of notoriety.

Posted by extramsg at 9/15/2005