PETA Obsessed with Foie Gras
PETA is beating the drums against foie gras again, this time offering a $10,000 prize to any chef who can come up with a vegetarian foie gras alternative.
It seems like there are many more worthy targets (factory farms, anyone?) than foie gras, which, in the US, is mainly produced on small farms, from animals that get a whole lot more care and better quality of life than the chicken we all eat every night for dinner without batting an eye. Plus, foie gras is delicious.
In any case, I surprise myself by having a nomination: The portobello mousse at Dirt Candy is rich, earthy and intense, with a silky texture reminicent of foie gras. No, it's not as good as foie gras, but it's awfully tasty, and inventive too.
Dirt Candy
430 East 9th Street
212-228-7732
19 comment(s) / Post a Comment
I am French & for those who do not know, France is the first producer of Foie Gras.
The diseased liver of those tortured birds means that 40 million ducks & 500,000 geese die from being force-fed each year.
80 percent of those animals are grown in factory farms.
Is there a hierarchy in cruelty? Would a force-fed bird from a small farm choose the life of a factory farm chicken?
Probably not as it does not think about it. But what is sure is that both animals feel pain just as we do & that we have the power to be compassionate.
Nicolas is repeating the formulaic screed about torturing geese by "force-feeding" them. PETA sympathizers turn a blind eye to the fact that geese and ducks who are fed grain by a funnel in the last weeks of their lives are anything but "tortured". In numerous articles, I've read that they come running to be fed. While there may be French factory farms where animals are confined during the process, that is not the case with American foie gras producers. I don't see why journalists would lie -- tortured domestic animals makes a better story than happy ones.
What is lost here is the hardly-secret agenda of PETA to stop the use of animals for human consumption. Foie gras=torture is one small step along that path, and the fact that it happens not to be true is inconsequential to them.
Posted On: Thursday, Jan. 8 2009 @ 7:23PMJoseph, you are right. PETA is doing the same with the carriage operators of Central Park, too. The NYC carriage trade is the most regulated in the world. The horses get better treatment than they do in many other equine sports. Yet, they are villified. If PETA can take down the largest and most iconic carriage trade in the world it would set a precedent to do it elsewhere. Just as they say the birds are being tortured, they say the horses are being mistreated. Where are the cruelty violations? Where is the proof? There simply isnt any, and they know it. So, they resort to lies, propaganda, and harassment. One of these days the rest of the world will sit up and take notice. Until then, all we can do is hope people arent all easily led fools like the PETA followers.
Posted On: Thursday, Jan. 8 2009 @ 10:02PMYes, those peta people have blood in their eye and not enough to worry about. The fact that we have people starving every day even 5 miles where I live in newark, new jersey warrants a bit more attention than the force feeding of geese. The fact that children in this and other countries do not get enough high quality protein in their diet, and too much unhealthy processed carbohydrates to give them type 2 diabetes as early as the age of 8, should be of greater interest. We have all drunk the Koolaid on the "right" thing to do and in many cases its just plain wrong. Pass the foie gras. And don't forget the gin.
Posted On: Thursday, Jan. 8 2009 @ 11:41PMWhat is the big deal?
The feeder grabs each bird and plunges the metal pipe of the feeding machine down the birds' throat. The machine pumps a corn-and-oil mixture directly into their gullets in just a few seconds, equivalent to one-fourth to one-third of the birds' own body weight each day.
In a matter of weeks, their livers swell up to ten times their normal size. Breathing and walking become difficult as the liver pushes against other organs, causing respiratory stress due to decreased air sac space in their lungs, and forcing the legs to move outward at an unnatural angle. Ducks at foie gras farms have been observed panting and struggling to stand, using their wings to push themselves forward when their crippled legs can no longer support them. Struggling to move causes infection-prone open pressure sores to develop and fester on their hocks (legs) and keels (chest area).
Their plumage becomes encrusted with filth, and most of them develop what foie gras farmers call "wet neck"-when their unpreened feathers curl up and become coated with dirt and oil.
What's the big deal?
Posted On: Friday, Jan. 9 2009 @ 10:21AMJust watch it.
If you can watch it, then you can eat it.
That should be the law.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxR4oCg35Jg
So does that mean if I can watch Saw I can eat you? Silence of the Lambs? Faces of Death?
Human liver is probably pretty grainy, like pigs liver...
I LOVE the exaggeration and push button words PETAphiles like to use. Please. It tastes good and the animal are treatd fine. Why dont you PETArds help animal that are being physically abused, starved, etc. Instead, you go around screaming at old ladies for wearing fur, comparing the holocaust and slavery to livestock slaughter and slandering good, honest people who just so happen to work with animals. Get a life, folks! Oh, and STOP KILLING ANIMALS, PETA! Last year PETa killed 97% of the "rescues" they took in! A**HOLES
Posted On: Sunday, Jan. 11 2009 @ 2:47PMLinda:
Imagine how many of the starving people in New Jersey could be fed off the food that's force-fed to geese and ducks to make Foie Gras.
Posted On: Tuesday, Jan. 13 2009 @ 1:34PMYou are are a bitch and not only will I never read the voice but I will start dumping all your papers in your bin in the trash cans. cunt,
Posted On: Wednesday, Feb. 18 2009 @ 7:35PMThe New York Carriage industry is the LEAST unregulated one where even comptroller thompson who did the audit on the industry support the ban and stated the suffering has to end sooner, those carriage drivers are thugs and they overcharge tourists.
see these videos on the truth
http://www.youtube.com/user/horsesinnyc
http://www.youtube.com/user/donnyfmoss
Homophobic attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbTb1tOLKc&feature=channel_page
I am very disappointed in the voice and I know understand why readership is down. you just lost anther
Posted On: Wednesday, Feb. 18 2009 @ 8:30PMWhat an ignorant opinion this poor, uniformed woman has. The Voice lost some more readers with this one. Foie gras is cruel, and it has nothing to do with hungry children.
Both situations are tragic, and one is wholly a consequence of our greed and inhumanity.
the Village Voice really sunk a new low. No wondering the paper is sitting in piles unread even though it is free.
Posted On: Thursday, Feb. 19 2009 @ 12:54AMWhat a juvenile proposition--where are the writer's critical thinking skills? There are always many "worthy targets" for intervention. Does that negate the importance of this one? No. Are those battles being fought? You can be sure of it.
Your assertion that these tortured birds live great lives and receive wonderful care is absurd--the sort of line that all animal abusers posit. Along the lines of saying that animals used in dog-fighting are lucky to be alive. Pure stupidity. There are many delicious treasures in the world of food that do not involve gratuitous torture.
I agree with others who have synthesized some of the problems at the Voice: it is a useless and outdated "news source" and that is why readership keeps sinking. Trying to model it after the bitchy "Sex and the City" mindset of consumerism, excess, and cruel fashion is not going to help.
How about writing that is lively, spirited, thought-provoking, and useful?
Not this trash.
Posted On: Thursday, Feb. 19 2009 @ 9:55AMKarma is a bitch and I hope this cunt chokes on her next meal.
Posted On: Thursday, Feb. 19 2009 @ 4:19PM
