To be fair to Jill, she is a true progressive and did update her piece with the following acknowledgment: I'm being corrected in the comments... apparently the practice of forcefeeding is so gruesome that there's no way any goose would eat THAT MUCH on its own. I recounted that story as I heard it but perhaps it was overly optimistic.
Imagine this: someone grabs you by the throat, pries open your mouth wide, inserts a 10 inch lead pipe (or plastic, doesn't matter, same pain level) deep into your gullet, scarring your esophagus in the process, a button is pressed and one whole kilogram of pap made with corn boiled with fat (to facilitate ingestion) is mechanically delivered into your stomach! That's life for unlucky geese or ducks, done at least three times a day, quite often five or six times. The liver grows up to ten times its normal size in a matter of weeks.
Force-feeding begins when the ducks or geese are just three months old. For nearly a month large deposits of fat in the liver are made, thereby producing the buttery consistency sought by the producers.
A coalition of United States animal protection groups going by the name GourmetCruelty.com have conducted an undercover investigation into the foie gras industry. The investigation uncovered filthy, crowded conditions and documented an industry standard of disregard for the pain and suffering inherent to foie gras production. Investigators took undercover footage of the immensely traumatic forced-feeding process, and rescued 15 of these long-suffering ducks
The Alzheimer's connection, with link to the article:
FOIE GRAS, enjoyed as a luxury since ancient Egyptian times, may be linked to the onset of diseases including Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, researchers have suggested.
The scientists who carried out the study say those with a family history of such illnesses should consider avoiding foie gras.
The possible risk comes from "amyloid" proteins found in the delicacy, which is made from the swollen livers of force-fed geese and ducks. The proteins have been linked to the onset of all these conditions.
The Animal Protection & Rescue League has exposed the only three "foie gras" producers in the U.S. and helped investigate several in France. In Defense of Animals and APRL sued under California's Unfair Business Practices law to force the passage of SB 1520, which Gov. Schwarzenegger signed in 2004 to ban both the production and sale of foie gras in California by 2012.
Investigators documented workers carelessly and roughly grabbing ducks by their throats as they struggled to avoid the forced-feeding pipe. After pumping massive quantities of food into the ducks stomachs, one worker was documented literally throwing birds across the pen. I can vouch for this treatment of fowls as I visited such a factory in the eighties, in a small hamlet fifty miles south of Sydney, Australia. I was there to write a piece for the local Gourmet Magazine about raising quails in the wild and found by chance that they too made foie gras, and in the most medieval surroundings you could imagine. I don't have to draw you a picture but let me say that what I saw that day has stayed with me ever since. I have never served foie gras in any of my establishments and never will. I did eat it once in France a long time ago, in a four star restaurant in Roanne. I remember feeling somewhat overstuffed, and never touched it since.
There are some ethical chefs who refuse to serve this abomination, not many but it's a start, like Wolfgang Puck, the Los Angeles chef whose culinary empire ranges from Spago to a line of frozen gourmet pizzas.
Here is a list of those that have seen the light, and refuse to serve it.
This list shows the restaurants that still serve it.
More than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, have banned production of the delicacy. In the US Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego among a growing list have banned it.
In June 2005, New York Times editor Lawrence Downes was invited to a visit of the same farm, including specifically the gavage process, and he "saw no pain or panic...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...seemed neither particularly gentle nor particularly rough."
Dr. Ward Stone, wildlife pathologist with the NYSDEC and Adjunct Professor at SUNY has on several occasions conducted post-mortems on ducks that died from force feeding, including from the same farm a few months after Mr. Downes' visit. In September 2005, he writes, "...the short tortured lives of ducks raised for Foie Gras is well outside the norm of farm practice. Having seen the pathology that occurs from Foie Gras production, I strongly recommend that this practice be outlawed."
In December 2005, a New York State veterinary group toured the same farm. Dr. Holly Cheever noted, "Based upon my previous observations, it was clear to me that the operations at this facility had been altered and choreographed so as to display a more humane system and to eliminate the more cruel aspects of the production method." However, other members of the visiting group did not express these reservations.
Producers argue that wild ducks and geese naturally ingest large amounts of whole food and gain weight before migration. Foie gras producers also contend that geese and ducks do not have a gag reflex, and therefore do not find force feeding uncomfortable.
"The ducks who had been force-fed twice a day for two weeks, their livers swelling from one-third of a pound to one and a half pounds, were so fat they moved little and panted. The birds gain an average of seven pounds in two weeks....Weak or injured ducks have their necks broken."
The pro and the con:
"To feed the ducks, a sitting worker grasps the bird's head and inserts about 10 inches of pipe down its neck. An overhead funnel connected to the pipe pumps in a dose of corn mush, creating a golf ball-sized bulge as it goes down."--Michelle Locke, Associated Press, as seen in USA Today, Dec. 17, 2003, "Foie Gras Turns Activists' Stomachs"
"Just because an animal suffers, it's not a violation of animal cruelty laws." Robert Julian, attorney for Sonoma Foie Gras, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Dec. 31, 2003.
Yeah, right. Just because it's an animal, it has no feelings! Well, some of us do! |
