Have you ever attended an event, or a keynote, or a concert and felt so totally swept up in the delivery and energy in the room that you completely bought into the experience and only later, when you got back to your house or apartment or whatever said, "What the hell just happened?" And then you put on the CD of the band you'd just heard or watched a TV clip of the speech you'd just seen and, with a bit of time and reflection, wondered what you'd really been so excited about in the first place?

I'm guessing you can tell that this just happened to me.

I recently heard a very prominent chef with stellar credentials speak lyrically and beautifully about spending time in southern Spain with a farmer who raises "natural" foie gras. Well, he doesn't actually raise the foie gras, I suppose, he raises the geese, but instead of force feeding them grain (a much maligned practice called gavage) he gives them access to bountiful land, electrifies only the outside of the fence (to keep predators out -- but the geese stay in of their own volition), and eschews the use of antibiotics. He even discovered that the geese love to eat a particular yellow flower with fervent excitement, so he supplies it to them in abundance -- and so, of course, their livers become naturally fat and appealingly yellow. (High-end chefs prefer foie gras with a yellowish tint.)

"He was giving the geese what they needed, and they were giving him their livers."

The story continued, with more beautiful imagery and a lovely moral at the end, which was this: ethical food is tasty food. This foie gras, which won a major world award, is the most flavorful the world over for one simple reason: because the geese are treated well, and are happy.

After I caught my breath and left the dark ballroom, I squinted at the florescent lights in the hallway and became increasingly disturbed. I'm pretty moderate when it comes to things like foie gras. I've eaten it, I know it's cruel, but it's not my issue and I don't get caught up in its rightness or wrongness because I have other battles to fight and other fish to fry. But somehow painting a picture of foie gras as a moral food really stuck in my craw, even if the geese who gorge themselves do so naturally and are The Happiest Geese in the World.

It seems that the Foie Gras nonsense has reared its ugly head here in Seattle. One of my favorite restaurants, Lark, has recently seen weekly protests in front of its restaurant. The Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN) has decided to put this locally owned, small business right into their crosshairs. Sales of foie gras, by the owners accounts, have not been affected.

But the issue has sort of taken the weekly alternative paper by surprise when their food critic, Bethany Jean Clement, started posting on the issue. (Note: If memory serves, it was Ms. Clement who suggested to her editor to give me a shot at restaurant reviewing a few years back. Although she and I have never met, such a relationship is worth noting. Of course my memory may be wrong.)

The result of those posts? Explosive comment chaos, chock full of misinformation, comic posturing, and out and out insults about class. In short, everything that makes the foie gras debate fun.

Oh, and as an added bonus, NARN is using the recent ruling from the Better Business Bureau's Advertising Board dispute with D'Artagnan as one of the many justifications for their protest. It's interesting to note that NARN is using findings from a board that likely had no farmers, veterinarians, philosphers, or scientists on the panel. But hey, that's just my take.

So for those of you in Seattle new to the foie gras debate, let me provide a bit of an introduction into the issues surrounding the dish.

What is Foie Gras? Foie Gras is a food product made of the liver of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened. Source.

Specially Fattened? What does that mean? It means that the ducks and geese are feed extensively, sometimes through the use of a process called gavage. Gavage, in foie gras production, is the process in which corn is force-fed to farm-raised ducks through a funnel down their throats. Source.

Force-fed? That sounds horrible! Well, if you're a human, it would be. But ducks and geese have a different anatomy than humans. Source.

Different? How? Well for one, they can store up to half their body weight in a diverticulum of their esophagus. This is a common trait to all birds.Source

But a tube is stuck down their throat! Not really. According the Hudson Valley, a maker of foie gras, the tube is put immediately in front of the duck or goose's esophagus, but not into it. Source.

What about the enlarged liver? Doesn't that cause suffering? Undeniably. It causes hepatic steatosis, which, if left untended, causes suffering in the duck and will force it to collapse. Source.

So the animal rights folks have a point? Yes and no. To produced good foie gras, a duck or goose should be killed before stress influences the taste of the liver. So the question becomes "at what point should the birds be killed". As the source reports, there is a threshold that the bird would feel stress from the enlarged liver. If the bird is killed before that threshold is met, there is no suffering. Source.

Additionally, one has to take into account that all animal livestock ultimately endures at least one measure of violence - the slaughter of said animal. Cows, pigs, chickens all go through this in order to enter the food chain. So in essence there is at least one correlation between foie gras and your average every day daily meat source.

So if every animal meets a cruel end, why do the animal rights folks attack foie gras? Good question, and all I can give is my opinion. I suppose if you ask an animal rights activist, they'll say that all cruelty needs to be fought, regardless of how popular or unpopular the food product.

But there are several aspects that make foie gras especially vulnerable to the activists protestations. 1) Production techniques are easily available to the public. Unlike chicken or pig farms, which agri-business severely restricts access to, foie gras' gavage process can be readily found on the internet. For people unfamiliar with animal farming, the process can be a bit of a shock. However, for people familiar with the techniques used in beef, pig, or chicken farms, the way the ducks and geese are treated seem quite tame.

2) Foie gras is not a mainstream food dish. People who don't go to upscale restaurants on a regular basis, rarely, if ever, eat foie gras. Thus it's hard for the regular omnivore to get too worked up about a food that they never eat.

3) Foie gras is seen as a food of the wealthy. And who wouldn't like to stick it to the wealthy, especially in today's economic environment?

So foie gras farmers are wealthy? Heh. No. Not really. In the recent case of the National Advertising Division against D'Artagnan, D'Artagnan has publically stated that they won't fight the ruling only because they can't afford to. Foie Gras farmers (and there are only three of them in the United States) and wholesalers are typically small businesses that lack a strong legal network that can defend them from highly motivated activist groups with strong legal council Source.

Okay, so why should I care about a meat I never eat? I can't tell you how to think, or what to care about. But consider this, what is the next food that could be determined to be created in a cruel manner? Veal? Chicken? Pigs? What a defeat of foie gras production means is that precedent will be set that a term with a broad definition ("Cruelty", which as it currently stands is open for interpretation as there is no precise legal definition when it comes to food production) can be applied to other food products.

In other words, people who know little about animal physiology can have the legal means to tell the rest of us what we can and cannot eat, based on their own morality, rather than the greater public's.

So we shouldn't listen to animal rights activists? No, I think we should, with a caveat. Jonathan Golob of The Stranger has it right. We should also be listening to scientists, farmers, philosophers, and anyone else who presents a rational argument to the debate. I would posit that a belief that runs contrary to public demands and concerns requires due diligence before we make decisions based off of that belief. Forcing change through misinformation, half-truths, and propaganda runs contrary to that, and one could argue is counter-productive for the long term.

Do you have any advice to Animal Rights Activists? Several, the first of which is that they have to recognize that meat eating will be around for quite some time. A reduction of meat eating is a good idea. A worldwide cessation of meat eating is both nonviable and unlikely. If one is to use that as a basic premise to the animal cruelty debate, then one must acknowledge that some cruelty is simply unavoidable.

But more specifically, I would say that they should talk with foie gras producers in order to understand the entire picture, rather than looking at some video's on Youtube to get their education. Foie gras producers are generally quite transparent in their techniques, and would likely welcome a respectful debate about the issues. Using intimidation, either through protests or via legal means, will likely force a more defensive and aggressive posture by those who have economic interests in the industry. But that's more of a guess on my part.

Josh, over at The Food Section has an interesting post about the Humane Society of the United States pursuing a campaign against foie gras production, and using the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureau to meet their political agenda.

From the article:

NAD reviewed D'Artagnan's "Internet advertising" (essentially, the D'Artagnan website) following a challenge made by HSUS over two "express claims" about its foie gras: (1) "The liver is not diseased, simply enlarged," and (2) "Animals are hand-raised with tender care under the strictest of animal care standards." The Humane Society argued that these claims implied a series of messages it deems false, namely that artisan duck foie gras is "not produced by force feeding, "produced by healthy animals," and"produced humanely."

Following a review of evidence submitted by both sides, NAD concluded that D'Artagnan had not adequately substantiated the first claim about the health of the duck liver. It also found that the second claim about how the ducks are cared for "suggests a level of care and oversight that is not supported by the evidence provided by the advertiser and is inconsistent with the evidence in the record."

How interesting and convenient is it that an advertising council can determine what is meant by "raised humanely" or what constitutes a "healthy duck liver"? I wonder how many philosophers, biologists, and yes even farmers are on the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureau that allowed them to come to the conclusion that D'Artagnan produces their foie gras inhumanely, and that they're selling unhealthy livers to the public at large.

My guess? Zero.

And for the record, when it comes to discussing deep issues of ethical importance, top on my list of people I don't want determining policy are Advertising Councils.

Do you want to know the bit of the article that really frustrates me?

When reached for comment, Lily Hodge, Director of Public Relations at D'Artagnan, said that the company considered appealing the NAD recommendation, but determined that pursuing such an action would be onerous: "We don't have the lawyers, the time, and the budget to do that," she said. "We don't have a battery of lawyers like they do."

Every time I read that paragraph, I realize how simple it is to force people with slim profit margins to do one's bidding: Simply get a large institution to legally impose its will upon the smaller business In essence - make it financially nonviable to respond. I realize that this happens all of the time, but it still irks me when it's done.

I'll say it before, but it needs repeating - their are only two reasons why Foie gras Producers are being targeted.

1) It's a food that is mostly consumed by the upper class. So the every day consumer of meat isn't vested in the outcome of this debate.
2) The producers of the food don't have the financial resources available to engage in long term legal battles (unlike, say, the cattle industry, which has quite deep pockets).

The stupidity that was the Chicago Foie Gras ban is no longer. The City council has repealed the act of two years ago.

Just out of curiosity...I wonder how much time and money was wasted in this blip of an issue?

From the always wonderful Law for Food:

While fois gras opponents aren’t seeking to determine liability, the Hand formula remains useful for comparing the harm of fois gras to the other possible harms worth protesting throughout the industrialized food supply. Feedlot overcrowding, for instance, is far more widespread, both in terms of total number of animals, and of total biomass affected, than fois gras production, and the amount of suffering per animal is at least as bad.

According to one estimate, world fois gras production in 2005 was 23,500 pounds. At 2 lbs/bird (a reasonable estimate, I am given to believe), that’s 12,250 birds per year. In the world.

By contrast, in 2003 10.7 Million cattle alone were raised in large feedlots, according to the USDA, and this number only represented one third of the 33 Million total cattle raised in the U.S. This does not take into account the number of pigs and sheep raised in feedlots in the U.S., or the cattle, sheep, and pigs raised in the rest of the world.

Thus, the number of creatures affected by fois gras production is substantially smaller than the number of creatures affected by feedlot practices.

It now falls to us to consider whether the harm done to fois gras birds may be so severe as to outweigh, when aggregated, the harm done to feedlot cattle when aggregated.

The entire post is worth reading, especially the bits on just how much damage/pain a duck or goose goes through due to gavage (or is it the gavage?).

I realize that to many folks out there, the posts of foie gras mean little , but to me it's one of the premier topics regarding food out there. Ethics are important to me, and they play a large role in how I determine purchases, both food and otherwise.

There are many questions raised by ethical purchasing (including my favorite - that using ethics as a variable is a luxury - but that is a post for a later date), but the key to ethics is that the facts used in these decisions have to be correct.

To some, the root of the foie gras debate is the question of animal cruelty. But even that is not entirely correct, because many people cannot determine the definition of what is "cruel".

For some vegetarians, the question of cruelty is an easy one - the killing of an animal, regardless of how well it was raised, is an intrinsically cruel act. Therefore, the foie gras debate means little, because the end result is the same, whether gavage is cruel or not.

But for meat eaters, the question is much more complex. Many omnivores have determined that eating meat is not intrinsically cruel, but rather the cruelty occurs at some point in the life of the animal itself. There are many variations of this perspective, usually taking the form of two different positions. I've oversimplified them for the benefit of the post length, but they are essentially the following:

• The cruelty happens while during the animals lifespan.
• The cruelty occurs to the species as a whole, if the animals are not used for food.

The former argument can be considered a short term position, while the latter is a longer term, "big picture" point of view. Very few people reflect upon the latter, and I'm going to avoid it for the time being.

The problem with both of these positions is, again, what is cruel? Is death the ultimate cruelty? If not, what is?

From my own perspective, I've come to terms with the fact that animals have to die in order to feed the population. Even in the production of grains, animals die (how many field mice, rabbits, and other such creatures do you think get caught up in the combines?) If death is a common occurrence in the realm of food production, then it can hardly be called cruel. The cruelty then, is not that animals die, but rather how the animals die.

When you start asking questions about the "how", then the questions turn to how the animals are treated. And when you start asking questions about how the animals are treated at death, it is also reasonable to ask how the animals are treated during their life. It is, at the very core, a question of the animal's "quality of life".

The difficulty in this perspective is how to define "quality of life" for animals. Certainly it would seem a tad specious to use a human standard for the "quality of life" of a cow or a pig. What would make a good life for a duck or a goose?

Here's where the opponents of foie gras fail in the debate. They have not yet provided any evidence that the act of gavage is in of itself, a bad "quality of life" for the birds. As Law for Food has pointed out, it is the incidental harms that they are focusing on (over crowding, sanitary conditions, etc, etc.) As not every foie gras producer is guilty of overcrowding or providing less than clean, then painting the entire industry with such a large brush is either being done intentionally or unintentionally. If unintentionally, then their position is based on fallacious reasoning. If it is done intentionally, then the debate then moves from a ethical debate, to that of a political one. And once you move into the realm of the political, whatever cachet one had from arguing from the ethical position is lost.

Once politicians start telling us what we can and cannot eat (and really, what are PETA and their ilk but politicians...or at least political agents... in this debate?), then they've crossed yet another ethical line. From my point of view, that's what is at stake here - do we want political agents influencing diets based on nebulous ethical determinations?

Chefs at 20 different restaurants in Philadelphia are celebrating foie gras with a weeklong tasting menu.

"For us it's a freedom-of-choice thing. We don't want people telling us what to do," (says chef Michael) McNally, who has spent about $20,000 in legal fees over the protests, said Wednesday.

(snip)

McNally, who co-owns London with his ex-wife, Terry, said he typically offers foie gras only in a butter he makes for New Year's Eve and other special events. But he and others question whether the protests would end with foie gras. The next foods under attack might be veal, lobster or chicken, given concerns about the way those foods are brought to market, they say.

I realize that this is likely a PR campaign to get people into their restaurants. But even so, good for them. Banning foods on questionable moral grounds is a slippery slope, and it's time people starting realizing that.

If there's a list of ways on how way to turn people away from your political cause, I'm thinking that attacking small, independently-run businesses because they serve a product you don't like is probably in the top five.

(h/t to Todd)

I know I've railed against foie gras bans before, but I have absolutely no problem with Wolfgang Puck removing foie gras from his menu. It's his menu, and he can do with it as he pleases.

Those of you sending me e-mails regarding this story, let me remind you that it's governmental bans of foie gras that cause me gastric concern, not a business owner arriving at a conclusion all on his own and altering his business plans accordingly. The two are vastly different issues.

Whoa...wait a minute. Let me read this site for a second or so...

Okay, so maybe he didn't come to his decision completely on his own, but he's an adult, and if he wants to be influenced by more militant animal advocates, more power to him.

What is interesting is his equating the production of foie gras as equally cruel as the practices surrounding crated pork and veal, as well as eggs from caged hens. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but one person's animal cruelty is another person's lunch.

We've talked about both of these items before.

Item 1: Starbucks to Drop RBGH Milk Products. They've already done so in the Northeast and the West.

Item 2: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer Is Seeking To Block Ban on Foie Gras.

Governor Spitzer is defending the rights of New Yorkers to eat a locally grown luxury food, foie gras. A state agency under the governor's control, the Department of Agriculture and Markets, is asking a state judge, Leslie Stein of state Supreme Court in Albany, to dismiss an animal rights lawsuit that claims ducks raised for foie gras.

There's a similar thread running through these two items - how we treat animals. Some people raise human health concerns over the use of rBGH, but to date, there is no hard evidence of there being a health issues in drinking rBGH milk. Of course the amounts of studies are lacking, and long term studies are practically non-existent, so that also needs to be taken into account. In short, a fair amount of evidence to either prove or disprove harm to humans simply isn't available yet.

Human health issues aside, why do I advocate for foie gras, but against rBGH? On the surface, both of these practices seem to adversely affect the animals subjected to their respective production techniques.

But when one digs deeper, the issue of cruelty becomes more vague when dealing with the ducks and geese used in foie gras. As Jeffrey Steingarten found out when writing his article on Foie gras, there is little in the way of scientific data to prove that the ducks and geese actually suffer during gavage, and in fact, their bodies seemed acclimated to the process of overeating:

Many varieties of duck are migratory, and they instinctively overeat before the long voyage; birds have the remarkable ability to store excess nutrients as fat in their livers, which regularly double in size, but not much more than that without force-feeding. (As you may have noticed in the mirror this morning, mammals store fat all about their bodies and not in their livers, unless they are very sick.) The duck's anatomy also includes a crop, "a pouchlike enlargement of the esophagus . . . in which the food undergoes a partial preparation for digestion before passing on to the true stomach," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Ducks don't chew—they have no teeth, and they have no gag reaction. A duck's crop can hold the excess corn it is fed, unless it is forced to swallow too much, in which case some of the corn gets forced into the bird's stomach or clogs its throat, a rare occurrence when ducks are fed by hand.

However, when it comes to cows and rBGH, suffering becomes clearly more observable. Even Monsanto, the major proponent of bovine growth hormones, admits that use of hormones can lead to an increased risk of mastitis in cows. Donald M. Broom, a Ph.D. at the of Clinical Veterinary Medicine of Cambridge University wrote the following for the EU Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare and given as a report to the Proceedings of the 21st World Buiatrics Congress:

BST administration causes substantially and very significantly poorer welfare because of increased foot disorders, mastitis, reproductive disorders and other production related diseases. These are problems which would not occur if BST were not used and often results in unnecessary pain, suffering and distress. If milk yields were achieved by other means which resulted in the health disorders and other welfare problems described above, these mans (sic) would not be acceptable. The injection of BST and its repetition every 14 days also causes localised swellings which are likely to result in discomfort and hence some poor welfare.

Beyond the scientific questions are the political ones. Typically those calling for a ban on bovine growth hormones are not calling for a complete cessation of milk production. From the comments left on this site by a handful of anti-foie gras folk, there seems to be other items that they wish to see banned. Given their "all or nothing" approach to food bans, it's difficult for me to give them the benefit of the doubt when they are unlikely to do the same.

Are these rationalizations on my part? I don't believe so. Although some will disagree with me, the ideas of 'animal cruelty' and 'animal welfare' are nuanced. These aren't easy questions, and many of the answers require introspection from the consumers of meat.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics, Animal Welfare, rBGH, foie gras

I bring you the perfect response to the silly Chicago liver ban:

CHICAGO (STNG) -- Chicago health inspectors paid a surprise visit to a previously warned River North restaurant last week to catch it in the act of selling foie gras -- only to find that the banned liver delicacy was being given away.

Bin 36, 333 N. Dearborn, managed to avoid a $250 ticket by offering foie gras “as a complimentary sidebar to another dish on the menu

Technorati Tags: Foie Gras