Personally, I think foie gras is gross. It tastes like meat icing, emphasis on “icing.” My mom’s chopped liver? Yum. Buttery, fatty duck puree? Overrated. Still, I’m with Bethany—focusing on foie ignores the larger problems in our food system, a food system increasingly dominated by large factory farms raising thousands of animals using inhumane methods that require huge quantities of drugs to keep them alive. While that system continues to do indescribable damage to our health, communities, and environment, so-called “animal rights” protesters are obsessing about a niche product produced on small farms that few people ever eat.

Still convinced that foie gras is the root of all evil? Check out the Accidental Hedonist’s foie gras primer, where you’ll learn how force-feeding works; what an enlarged liver feels like for a duck; and why foie gras is such an easy target. I don’t expect it to convince the animal rights nuts—they’re too busy comparing small business owners to child pornographers, disrupting people’s dinners, and accusing dog owners of genocide—but for the reasonable among you, it’s a handy, informative guide.

58 replies on “You Know What We Haven’t Talked About Enough Lately? FOIE GRAS!”

  1. #48 – Who said you were the root of all evil? I just said if you eat meat and think you’re an environmentalist you’re delusional. Like Erica. The only reason you think you’re an environmentalist is because you choose to remain ignorant about the damage the farm animal industry does to the environment. But hey, it’s all about feeling good about yourself, right? So you go gurl!

  2. #48 by the way, are you incapable of doing some research or reading? yes, eating meat is the equivalent of driving and SUV. what part of “18% of the emissions that lead to climate change” don’t you understand?

  3. Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

    Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

    To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

    Grain, meat and even energy are roped together in a way that could have dire results. More meat means a corresponding increase in demand for feed, especially corn and soy, which some experts say will contribute to higher prices.

    This will be inconvenient for citizens of wealthier nations, but it could have tragic consequences for those of poorer ones, especially if higher prices for feed divert production away from food crops. The demand for ethanol is already pushing up prices, and explains, in part, the 40 percent rise last year in the food price index calculated by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.

    Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.

    The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

    Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.

    Those grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes. The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t harmful, it’s way more than enough.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekin…

  5. Wow, from that NYT article it looks like eating meat just might save the planet, now that they can extract the methane from the manure, and use it to generate electricity. I’m sure it won’t be too long before we power cars, buses, trucks from methane. An abundant, renewable energy sounds like the solution for the energy crisis, and a way to get us off foreign oil. Not to mention it will be a financial shot in the arm for struggling farmers. Thanks for the link.

    Also, thanks to all this hubbub over foie gras, my curiosity has been peaked. I’ll be trying that for the first time this weekend. I found restaurants serving the dish via the protesters websites.

  8. Ok.
    Gavage properly done is NOT cruel. Automated mechanical gavage in a battery setting IS bad, hand operated gavage (where the operator can make sure it is not harming the goose/duck) does NOT hurt the bird or even cause mild discomfort. When tested foie gras has not been found with even trace amounts of animal stress hormones, which indicate the animals are not unhappy.
    The fattening of the liver is a natural process (geese and ducks do it to themselves before migration) and does not result in a diseased liver.
    Foie Gras production is NOT inherently cruel, that is an outright lie that flies in the face of all the reputable (ie not partisan) science.
    Plants are alive, scream when harvested and thre is a growing body of evidence which suggests plants can feel pain. We have to hurt or kill somerthings to survive, it is part of our nature. For all the animal rights groups claims of respecting nature, they seem unable to respect ours. They praise nature yet at the same time insist our ability to live in a state of un-nature should be exploited to turn humanity from its omnivore roots. The irony is delicious. Like meat in that respect.

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