(Apropos of the recent debate over foie gras, factory farming, and animal vs. human rights):
Chris Cosentino, the chef at well-regarded San Francisco restaurant Incanto (a pioneer of the now-trendy “whole hog” movement) posted a beautifully written, compelling manifesto on sustainability, vegetarianism, the food system, and foie gras on the restaurant’s web site. A sample (the whole thing runs around 3,000 words):
The notion of a society accepting an unpleasant trade-off between something valued within that society and death of innocents is not exclusive to food production. It is virtually a defining characteristic of collective social order, whether among humans or other animals. Each year in the United States, for example, more than forty thousand people are killed and more than two million injured in transportation-related accidents. Yet we accept the level of violence and suffering wrought by this human activity, with little or no ongoing debate. Why? First, because vehicular travel is convenient and interwoven with our way of life. But also because our country is founded upon the notion of personal liberty, which includes freedom of movement and freedom to choose how one travels. Even when that activity carries with it the certainty that thousands of people, including innocent by-standers, will die each year directly as a result, we implicitly accept this terrible cost in exchange for the opportunity to move around fast with relatively little hindrance. I have searched for an association of human rights activists that is protesting this senseless violence and calling for a ban on all mechanized travel. I have not yet found one. […]
Working to ban something that 99% of people never eat is not an act requiring great moral or physical courage in the same vein as was, say, the fight for civil rights in the U.S. or the fight for self rule in India. By comparison, the anti-foie gras movement is — at best — founded upon a shrewd political calculation in which the professed indignation of a few is used to harness the indifference of the many to the inherent political cowardice of elected officials, in order to achieve a desired political outcome. In essence, it’s a confidence game in which participating meat-eaters, by agreeing to condemn something that they don’t care about, receive the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail card, i.e., the right to feel slightly less guilty as they bite into that factory-farmed McNugget. Guilt and moral superiority are tradable currencies; the anti-foie gras camp exploits this to the hilt. And we let them. […]
The great success of the anti-foie gras movement has been based its ability to carve foie gras off as a distinct and separate issue from the rest of food production. Regarded in isolation, with no personal experience and without a balanced representation of the facts, of course most people oppose it. But lump it in with hamburger, chicken, and the rest of agribusiness, shine a light on all the discomforting practices within our food world and it would be an entirely different debate. Foie gras would be seen for what it is: less than a blip. Small groups of people dissecting the food world into socially acceptable vs. unacceptable categories is a recipe for terrible public policy and the worst in relativist ethics.
Chefs are one of those classes of people who tend to be smart, committed, and eloquent in other ways besides the one they earn their crust with. Right on, Mr. Cosentino, and thank you.
Exactly! My way or the highway! Activists who accept incremental progress and small victories around the edges in the hopes of building to later success are deluded! They should attack the entire agribusiness and food consumption culture head on and bring it all down at once and accept no compromise!
You should write a story about the string of ballot victories animal rights activists have won in Arizona, Massachusetts and California, among other places, in the last few elections. You’re always sitting on the sidelines telling activists how it’s done; maybe you should learn from a movement that has a winning track record.
In the case of NARN, it’s really pretty simple, since they’ve already admitted that their ultimate goal is to ban the consumption of all meat.
Wow, that is a really good point, and well said. Thanks for posting it, Erica.
This was awesome, ECB. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, come on.
Far more than 99% of people would never fight pit bulls to the death in their basements. Is it hypocritical to ban pit bull fighting? Is it hypocritical to ban horse fucking? Is it hypocritical to ban blowing up kittens with firecrackers? Is it hypocritical to ban kicking kittens across the room for fun? Of course not. When some activity emerges as an obvious moral problem with no benefit, like foie gras, we ban it.
Nobody is comparing foie gras to great civil rights battles. It’s a relatively minor problem, like horse fucking or pit bull fighting, but it should be addressed because it’s still immoral by any common standard.
Um, it is a distinct issue. Just like in 300 BC when animal sacrifices were banned in India. Just like in 1635 when pulling wool off of live sheep was banned in Ireland. Just like in 1654 when cockfighting was banned in England. Just like in 1835 when the “running of the bulls” was banned in England. Just like in 1958 when slaughtering animals without stunning them first was banned. Just like in 1960 when abandoning pets was banned. Just like in 1970 when beating seals with clubs was banned. Just like in 1986 when unregulated laboratory vivisection of monkeys was banned. Just like in 2004 when fox hunting was banned. Just like in 2008 when caging veal so they couldn’t move was banned in California. Just like dozens and dozens of animal cruelty laws that have been passed in every jurisdiction.
This isn’t something new. When a horrific and cruel act, like foie gras, starts becoming practiced, society bans it. I’m sure people made the exact same argument as you in 1635 when it became illegal to pull the skin off of live sheep.
How do you feel about protein resequencers?
@2, good luck on attacking the entire agribusiness and food consumption culture. I’m guessing that 99% of public support for changing agribusiness would evaporate in the face of a $25 chicken at Safeway. The idea of everyone eating “ethically” raised, free range, organic food at all times is only an option for the wealthy, and an annoying example of the irrelevant “activism” that is often embraced by the privileged.
Nice post, lizzie.
The automobile comparison is a little off. With car travel, death is not a certainty, it’s a probability. I cannot for certain say that if I desire to drive my car today (or over my entire life), someone will die. Hence the individual liberty takes precedence. However, I can say for certain that if I immobilize some calves because I want more tender veal, then the “unpleasant trade-off” is going to happen.
Besides, we don’t let people drive however they want — there are speed limits, rules of the road, etc. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to put some speed limits on our food production processes (no immobilization of calves, etc.).
Personally, I don’t see foie gras as being much different than other meat production — it can be done humanely, but is also can be produced in factory farms in a supremely inhumane way. I think there’s been some intellectual dishonesty on both sides of the debate (anti-foie gras people pretending all foie is produced in horrific factory farm conditions; pro-foie gras people, including some Stranger staffers, pretending it’s all produced on the happy little geese farm than Bourdain showcased).
@8
No, see, like the exclamation point is sort of an irony tag? Because like the article I linked to was ECB just this week ripping to shreds a housing activist who wouldn’t accept compromise? A guy who wants to win it all, and right now, and therefore comes away empty-handed?
The irony is that these “friends” (read: enemies) of animal rights activists are offering “helpful” (read: unhelpful) advice that they should stop spending resources on small victories and low hanging fruit like foie gras or basic protections for greyhounds.
If ECB and these chefs were honest, they would give animal rights PETA and NARN and HSUS the same advice they give to the Displacement Coalition: take baby steps when you must, compromise if it means moving forward, don’t waste resources trying to achieve total victory and end up with nothing.
The accusation that NARN wants to eliminate all meat is ironic in this sense. They are too smart to waste time on an unrealistic goal yet their enemies would like to pretend they are just that dumb. They’re not.
So basically, if you eat any meat, you’re a hypocrite for opposing foie gras?
Sweet. Because I don’t eat any meat. And 90% of the time, I eat a vegan diet. So I’m comfortable saying that I think that what they do to most of the geese is immoral.
Also that even if I ate meat and didn’t care about the geese, the idea of eating a fattened liver is just gross, moral or not.
Foie gras is neither cruel nor inhumane, though.
@6
“Horse Fucking” and “Blowing Up Kittens” oh Dizzie Lizzie you are adorable in a crazy insane kinda way.
@11 – Fine, it grosses you out, don’t eat it. That doesn’t justify banning something.
Look, the point of the poster is this: all this energy spent on outrage over foie gras misses the real atrocities being committed in the food industry, excuses the much, much more heinous practices that are much, much more widespread in factory farming practices with beef and chicken. Yet foie gras sucks up all the oxygen in the food debate. This is self-defeating. The anti-foie-gras community wants to take on foie gras, but can’t get any traction of course because people like myself – people who care about what they eat, and make it local and organic as much as possible, and cut back on meat consumption – are laughing at how ridiculous and marginal this fight is. NARN misses the boat on a much wider coalition that could potentially win much larger victories, but instead has marginalized itself over a marginal, teensy-weensy side battle in a much larger war.
I think the comparison between the dangers involved in driving a car and the suffering inflicted upon food animals is a little disingenuous. For one, people choose to assume a risk by driving. Geese don’t make the choice to be force fed until their livers swell unnaturally.
Furthermore, the cost benefit analysis of driving would probably favor driving in the out come. I don’t think anyone is significantly benefited from foie gras to justify the amount of suffering it takes to produce it.
I do agree that most meat production is equally hideous, but excusing one immoral act by referencing another hardly makes for a good argument.
DavidG, there have been wider victories.
The only recent loss was when Sarah Palin spent political capital she couldn’t afford (you’re welcome, Barack Obama) to defeat a ban on hunting wolves from the air in Alaska. The claim that “all the oxygen” is sucked up by foie gras is simply false. Calf and pig crates were banned in California and prior to that in Arizona. Massachusetts now has a law to protect greyhounds. Cockfighting was banned in Oklahoma. Etc.
Another thing worth considering is that maybe the energy of those willing to carry a sign against foie gras isn’t fungible. Perhaps these kids who want to protest foie gras wouldn’t have the same enthusiasm for whatever you think they ought to be working on. Maybe if their energy needs to be redirected then maybe you ought to try to lead them.
But from what I can see, the wider animal rights campaign is winning in the face of failure by other types of activists, such as low-income housing and gay marriage. Yet animal rights is mocked and scorned. It’s jealousy, and it’s a weak grasp of the basic facts.
Most chefs live in urban centers and have very low personal carbon impacts.
Now the people who dine in their restaurants, that’s different.
Me, I prefer snails cooked in garlic butter with a sprig of fresh parsley. Hearing their little cries as they’re murdered for my meal, makes the poignancy of snail, parsley and garlic dying for my sustenance all the much sweeter.
@12, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IWN8UGDy…
Foie gras is, by definition, force-feeding live ducks until their livers become diseased. Things that go along with foie gras by definition: The forced immobilization of ducks, vomiting and bleeding out of their mouths, infections and bleeding in the internal organs, mouth and throat, and a high percentage of ducks dying from the force-feeding and disease. If you don’t think that’s cruel or inhumane, you don’t think ANY treatment of animals is cruel or inhumane.
There are duck and goose livers that don’t require such cruelty, but foie gras DOES require horrific cruel practices. I saw a package of regular duck liver at QFC the other day with a big label that said “NOT FOIE GRAS.” Go buy that, I bet you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference.
@13, Thank you 🙂
@18 or go steal that you mean. what’s the difference.
gee, with about 3000 words it must be important and true!
“Chefs are one of those classes of people who tend to be smart, committed, and eloquent in other ways besides the one they earn their crust with.”
You obviously have never lived with a chef before. Old roommate back east was a sous chef, then head chef at a posh restaurant. He spent the majority of his non-working hours on playstation or in k-holes/meth stupors/on e. Wasn’t until he quit being a chef and went back to school that we were ever able to have a conversation that didn’t involve him repeating the same story to me three times over the course of a half-hour.
Really good chef, though.
Fuck your Youtube videos, Lizzie dear, they mean nothing. Geese barely have brains (we’d eat them if they did); they don’t know what the fuck is happening to them. And they mostly like it, anyways. Geese are eating machines.
Look, you can crow about your “victories” all you want, but the fact is, the progress is not coming from people like you. You have nothing to offer. You don’t understand what food is or why we eat it; you just have your fourteen-year-old girl horse-nose-petting perspective. It’s an intellectual and aesthetic void.
You know what’s making a difference? Chefs like Cosentino, and people like Anthony Bourdain and Michael Pollan. I’ve drastically changed my meat (and other food) consumption over the past few years, because I’m thinking about what I eat and where it comes from. There’s a movement afoot all right, of “conscious omnivores” if you will, that animal-rights activists share no credit in. In fact, we think you’re stupid and infantile and unread and uncultured.
There are lots of excellent reasons to reduce one’s intake of industrial meat. The welfare of geese is not one of them.
Foie gras is a non-issue. It’s a FAKE issue. Ethically your fake outrage is on the same level as being outraged at being teased in junior high because of your hair ribbons. Listening to you people go on about goose-stuffing is like listening to Bush administration criminals going on about WMD while the real threats walk around unmolested in the safe-keeping of our allies.
You forgot one victory, Elenchos. The ban on foie gras in Chicago was ignored, ridiculed, flouted and overturned, and foie gras protesters everywhere were made laughingstocks as a result.
@21, not all of them.
18, for me, there is a difference in taste. FG (fucking good) has a richer taste.
@8 I’m not wealthy or privileged in any way, yet “free range, organic food” comprises the vast majority of what I eat. You don’t have to be rich, just willing to commit to changing your diet. If you don’t want to make that commitment, fine, but don’t pull out the tired “organic food is only for the rich” straw man, because it’s total bullshit.
Fnarf, that thing was some manifestation of Chicago politics that has nothing to teach us, as with most of the weird tales behind how decisions get made in that city. It wasn’t a ballot initiative.
You can say “we think you’re stupid and infantile and unread and uncultured” but the “we” you’re talking about is how many people? I think they must be 49% or less of the voters. The people I’m talking about are enough to pass a new law at the ballot box, that is, a simple majority of the voters. Fifty-one-percent-plus of the electorate ain’t chopped liver, it’s enough to make things happen.
And has anything PETA or NARN has done made you any less willing to educate yourself and change your lifestyle? Have they made you want to clog your arteries and eat unsustainable poison out of petty spite? I don’t think so. They’re moving the ball forward just as much as conscientious omnivores, not working at odds with you.
I’ll bet geese brains would be great if beer batter-dipped and deep-fried. Of course, you’d have to kill an awful lot of geese to make up enough for just a single serving, but it’s not like they’re on the endangered species list or anything.
Yikes, Fnarf. I think Lizzie’s presenting a pretty clearheaded, informed vegetarian perspective. I’m not sure that labeling it “fourteen-year-old-girl horse-nose-petting” is at all called for. Plus, way to imply that the supposed femininity of her take makes it less valid–something that I doubt you really mean.
Oh yeah, and the notion that animal-rights activists in general are stupid, infantile, unread and uncultured is idiotic. I’m not sure why you’re trying to make Lizzie the whipping girl for the most ridiculous excesses of PETA-type groups.
I do find the references to the liver being “diseased” a little misleading.
Using the word “diseased” is just semantics. What the the liver is is fatty. In a human this could be considered a disease issue to be addressed with weight loss. In a goose whose time is short – not so much.
Maybe, but NARN and PETA might as well be buying billboards with that message. They can crow all they want about their glorious
…victories (and they will, they will) but the fact is most vegetarians and vegans I know consider them an embarrassment and most omnivores like me are more likely, not less, to order a steak or wear leather after being lectured by one of these idiots.
Sorry if that sounds spiteful, but being a preachy know-it-all is its own reward, so I’m sure they don’t mind.
Sancitmonious high end dining shits!!! Foie gras is not a staple. Foie gras is an indulgent bit of nonsense enjoyed by rich people. Period. Poor people do not eat foie gras. The working class does not eat foie gras.
Factory farming’s justification is cheap food for the masses. Foie gras’s justification is an unctuous mouthfull in the gabs of the filthy rich!
This sort of nonsense is only elegant if you have lost your moral compass on the road to prosperity.
As long as we are on the topic of food… Hey ECB can you pick me up a bottle of wine from QFC on your way home. Thanks!
@30 you’re wrong.
Hey, I’m a big carnivore and I don’t eat foie, nuggets, stuff that is not organic or free range, etc. The reason I don’t eat foie is that it is torture to the duck/goose.
By the reasoning in this essay, since we already are at war in Iraq, we may as well go to war in Iran.
Fucking idiotic.
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2009/0…
Erica, I asked this of Jonah and I asked it of Dom and I’ll ask it of you: why did you guys not even devote word one to the education funding and reform crisis at the state capital this session? It’s like 40% of the state budget, and it’s going to involve thousands if fired teachers across the state. Disappointing.
I think that protesting a small (responsible, local) business in this economy is a true crime.
Isn’t the mass-meat market a more worthwhile arena to focus your energy?
Everytime I walk by those protesters on Friday nights, I want to go eat Foie to spite them, and I don’t even like foie. It just makes me angry that the protestors would pick on a little business like they do.
@35
Why?
Actually you are wrong!
Eat a liver, bitches! You’ll like it, I promise… Especially right on top of a chunk of grass-fed Tenderloin. Oh boy, that’s tasty bits.
And shiat, I’m not even rich! Just a lucky DUCK!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!
Yikes… that’s “beautifully written” and “compelling”? Really? When did embarrassing non sequiturs merit such praise?
I’m sure Bambi @ 31, 32 finds it compelling, but for those of us other than the insecure omnivores who frequent the comments in these posts, what specifically in that article is compelling?
I would have never tried Foie Gras had it not been for all the fuss made by protesters. I actually found a place that serves the dish via a foie protest website. While it’s not something I’d eat all the time, because it’s very fatty, it will be the occasional treat.
elenchos, I think I love you.
Yeah Fnarf, you actually have more in common with the anti-foie gras crowd than you think. It’s just that, well, you’re kind of a dick.
46, Are you one of those people who, when angry at your significant other, brings up stuff they did years ago. Do you find yourself saying things like, “Remember when you left the toilet seat up on September 25, 2004!?! I got my ass all wet!!!”, when you are mad at that person because they didn’t throw a towel in the hamper?