help get foie gras banned !!!

[eve]

I thought there were postings on foie gras, but it didn't show up on search.

Leading US chef Charlie Trotter has upset many of his peers by no longer serving foie gras on ethical grounds. Matthew Fort on why one of the most controversial delicacies on the menu is still so revered. This begins an article in today's UK Guardian. Read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1458336,00.html

[Spiral]

I read today in the latest edition of Vivalife magazine that after two months of demos the Herne Bay & Whitstable Animal Rights group persuaded a restaurant/bar in Canterbury to take foie gras off their menu. It pays to be persistent :)

[cedarblue]

its disgusting! i saw a prog where a chef went to a farm where the geese were raised to produce foie gras - they just have this grain poured down their throats straight into their stomachs :mad: :mad:

well done any chef who makes a stand against offering this 'delicacy'...

[sophia]

I would like to force feed the people that eat, buy cook and have anything to do with foie gras. It is so cruel. Why do people insist on these cruel ways of producing food. There are so many other things to eat, and surely, eating an organ that contains all the waste products and nasties of breaking down food can't be that nice. Lets hope they don't bring out vegan offle. I def won't be trying it :eek:

[bulletproof]

I would like to force feed the people that eat, buy cook and have anything to do with foie gras.

exactly, see how they like it. it's so sick, it should be illegal.. but then, so should factory farming.. and testing on animals.. *vote green!*

ps

yay, another bristolian! :)

[coconut]

Yeah I think foie gras should be illegal as well. I don't want to even imagine how painful it must be to be force-fed like that.


I would like to force feed the people that eat, buy cook and have anything to do with foie gras

I read that Spike Milligan attempted to do just that to a Harrods store manager, during a protest. A genius to the core :)

[Mister The Cat]

Cruelty aside, just why on earth would anyone want to eat this?????!!!!! :eek:

[DianeVegan]

Yay for Charlie Trotter! He will also prepare a vegan menu with 24 hours notice. He already offers a vegetarian menu. Of course, make sure someone else is paying since the veg menu is $115 :eek: (Hey, at least it's less than the omni at $135)

[Free_Tibet]

At the present time there are 250 items made of foie gras being sold at the Amazon.com site. Please sign this petition to tell Amazon to stop selling this cruel product:
Petition against cruel Foie Gras production @ Amazon Site. (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/939654786?ltl=1125009863)

[Free_Tibet]

Murder Most Fowl: Gourmet Cruelty Shines a Light on Foie Gras (http://www.satyamag.com/oct05/hawthorne.html )
By Mark Hawthorne
http://www.satyamag.com/oct05/hawthorne.html

When the animal rights movement began widely focusing on farmed animals in the 1980s, it wisely chose the veal industry as a primary target. Images of baby cows locked in tiny crates spoke volumes, and most consumers were rightly appalled when they learned of the cruelties these male calves endured. As the public’s taste turned away from veal, countless restaurants dropped it from their menus, and, although the anti-veal campaign continues, their initial success buoyed animal protectionists to further action.

It is not a stretch to say that the culinary extravagance known as foie gras, the “fatty liver” of male ducks and geese, is this decade’s veal. As with veal, foie gras is created by grossly manipulating an animal’s body—in this case the Moulard duck—to provide a fleeting gustatory pleasure to the palate. And like their bovine counterparts, the birds being exploited for their livers have activists around the globe championing their cause. More than a dozen countries have outlawed foie gras production, and last year, animal advocates sponsored a California bill that will ban the production and sale of the delicacy in that state in 2012. Similar legislation is pending in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Oregon.

“This move to ban foie gras and other animal cruelties dramatically illustrates that the real criminals are those torturing animals for profit,” says Sarahjane Blum, who started GourmetCruelty.com with fellow activist Ryan Shapiro in 2002. This Washington DC-based group uses a variety of methods to keep pressure on the two farms primarily responsible for foie gras produced in the U.S.: Sonoma Foie Gras in California and Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York. Ducks on these farms are denied water to swim in, which is essential to waterfowl for their grooming and health, and those on the New York farm are restricted to small isolation cages. Ducks at both locations are fed three times a day using a metal tube and pneumatic pump that forces a pound of feed down a bird’s throat in seconds, a process that eventually enlarges the duck’s liver to ten times its normal size as it becomes 80 percent fat. The suffering these animals experience is certainly no less shocking than what a veal calf goes through, and while activists are no less dedicated to the fight against foie gras, two new, opposing avenues of ideology intersected shortly after September 11, 2001, making the landscape of activism a bit trickier to negotiate than it was 20 years ago.

One avenue was the introduction of open rescues to liberate animals from places of exploitation. Pioneered in the 1980s by Patty Mark, this model of activism is based on the desire to provide aid, veterinary care, and sanctuary to any neglected or abused animal in a confined condition. Activists engaged in open rescues not only save lives but also document the cruel conditions in which they find the animals, who are most often liberated from factory farms. Removing sick or injured animals and going public with their discoveries quickly put activists on animal agriculture’s “most wanted” list, but it wasn’t until the 9/11 tragedy that agribusiness did much about it. The horrific terrorist attacks of that day resulted in the second ideological avenue: the USA Patriot Act. This sweeping assault on civil liberties has given genuine teeth to factory farming’s battle with animal activists, lumping them (as well as peace and eco-activists) together with suicide bombers and right-wing militias. Amid our nascent climate of intolerance toward any civil disobedience, nearly all protest activity is being labeled “terrorism,” and animal activists are being called to appear before grand juries to testify about their actions. Agribusiness is thus armed with a bona fide weapon to use against anyone entering farms to rescue animals—like ducks exploited for foie gras.

Incomparable Cruelty
“Following the example of Patty Mark in Australia, groups like COK [Compassion Over Killing] and MFA [Mercy for Animals] had done a terrific job exposing what goes on in battery cage facilities, but apart from an investigation PETA did in 1991, foie gras had pretty much escaped this exposure,” says Shapiro. Founding GourmetCruelty.com, he explains, was a way to educate the public about an industry’s little-known practices while promoting veganism and an end to factory farming in general. In addition to its rescue and legislative work, they have produced an undercover documentary, Delicacy of Despair, which takes viewers behind the doors of the foie gras industry. Blum adds, “The cruelty of foie gras is so obvious and unnecessary that it makes it a perfect issue to illustrate the inherent cruelty of modern intensive animal agriculture. As such, the fight against foie gras needs to be seen as a fight against factory farming more broadly.”

Blum and Shapiro made headlines last year when they were arrested and charged with felony burglary for rescuing ducks from Hudson Valley Foie Gras (HVFG). It was the first time in nearly 30 years that criminal charges had been filed against animal advocates in the U.S. for openly liberating animals. Shapiro says they’re seeing big changes in how activism is viewed. “It used to be that factory farmers were reluctant to bring charges against open rescuers because they were so mortified by the graphic cruelty exposed through investigations by groups like COK and MFA that not only did they not press charges, they denied that the groups had been on their farms or that the farms shown on video were even theirs,” he says. “That was not the case with us. HVFG said, ‘That is our farm; they took those ducks from us,’ and they pressed charges.” Yet, just when it seemed the government was going to make an example of them—the two longtime activists were facing up to seven years in prison—the charges were abruptly dropped.

“It was obvious that a trial would only have further proven that the real criminals are those who torture animals for profit, not individuals moved by compassion to attempt to stop animal cruelty,” says Blum. “The factory farmers have a real dilemma. They’ve clearly realized they can’t just ignore the continued exposure of their cruel practices, but they’re also loathe to risk even further negative publicity by prosecuting those who try to help tortured and suffering animals.”

That suffering has been a flashpoint for those on both sides of the foie gras issue. While gourmet enthusiasts insist that force-feeding ducks merely replicates the pre-migration gorging the birds naturally experience (energy is stored as fat for long flights), animal rights activists and many veterinarians argue there is nothing natural about it. For one thing, Moulard are not migratory birds; indeed, they are artificial hybrids. Moreover, ducks in nature only double the size of their livers. When a bird’s liver expands to ten times its normal size, his entire body is affected. “Grossly enlarged livers are less able to perform their function of cleansing the bloodstream of waste products from the body,” explains avian veterinarian Laurie Siperstein-Cook. “The swollen livers also put pressure on the abdominal airsacs, which impairs the bird’s ability to breathe. They also push the legs out laterally, making it difficult for the birds to walk properly.” It is not uncommon for a duck’s liver to literally explode from overeating. By the time the duck is slaughtered, his liver has succumbed to a disease known as hepatic lipidosis.

Confronting a Troubling Trend
Blum says she was dismayed by how her arrest highlighted the view of ducks as matter without spirit. “It deeply saddened me to see that people’s priorities could be so topsy-turvy; that these animals, who could now swim and preen and enjoy the sun and life for the first time, were being treated as property and that this was the rationale behind the charges against me,” she says. “In the end, having the charges dropped, I can only hope, is a small sign that the reality of the foie gras industry is so harrowing people cannot fall back on easy arguments that animals are merely property, and I think that the continuing legislative efforts to protect animals against this horrific forced-feeding bears this out.”

“We certainly did not want to go to prison,” adds Shapiro. “But we absolutely recognized that no punishment would be as bad as what the 500,000 ducks in foie gras farms or the ten billion animals on factory farms in the U.S. go through every year. No jail cell is more restrictive than an isolation cage, and we were eager to confront the charges against us and to shine the spotlight on these egregious and horrific practices. I think once this became apparent, HVFG simply wasn’t interested in having that level of attention remain on them for that long.” He acknowledges that while GourmetCruelty.com is illuminating the horrors of factory farming, the Patriot Act is casting an ominous shadow over them. “The cynical exploitation of September 11th to marginalize animal advocates as terrorists was deeply troubling to us,” he says. “While we were very worried about it, it doesn’t appear we’ve been labeled ‘terrorists.’ But we’re definitely always mindful that we, like all animal advocates, are vulnerable to serious harassment under the guise of security measures.”

It is apparent that activists are making it more difficult for animal agriculture to carry on with business as usual—and facing the consequences of their actions more frequently. “As we speak,” says Blum, “members of the animal protection group Compassionate Consumers, who recently concluded an investigation and open rescue at battery cage egg farms controlled by Wegmans, are also facing charges in New York State. It seems clear that factory farmers have become increasingly threatened by animal advocates exposing the appalling conditions at their facilities and are becoming more desperate in their responses.” When the charges against them were dropped, Blum and Shapiro agreed not to enter HVFG again, though each remains committed to the group’s investigative work (assisted by the Animal Protection and Rescue League). “Though I cannot go back to HVFG, I can wake up each day and work to close them,” says Blum. “And that is just what GourmetCruelty.com intends to do. The whole experience of my arrest, and its aftermath, has only strengthened our resolve and our ability to put an end to the cruelty that is foie gras.”

Mark Hawthorne is a contributing writer for Satya. To take further action: don’t buy foie gras and let others know why; educate local restaurants and grocery stores and ask them to take this gourmet cruelty off their menus and shelves; and visit GourmetCruelty.com to request a copy of Delicacy of Despair.
http://www.stopforcefeeding.com/

[DianeVegan]

Thanks for the article. There have been a lot of articles about this topic in the U.S. this past year but only one well known chef publicly took it off his menu (that I know of anyway).

[adam antichrist]

MX, Wednesday October 19, 2005.
Pg 10, under the caption “nice one” :mad:


French MPs have approved a draft law declaring foie gras a national heritage, giving it the kind of protection reserved for great works of art. The Bill incudes three amendments devoted to foie gras, the delicacy that outrages animal groups.

“Foie gras is part of the cultural and gastronomic heritage protected in France,” the amendments read, specifically spelling out that “foie gras refers to the liver of a duck or goose fattened by force feeding.”

[moochbabe]

that's absolutely sick and appauling...
i have to hand it to Schwarzeneggar, he disagrees with how they are fed and such, and has now made a law prohibiting fois gras production in california...it's a step...

[PlumsOfDoom]

I hope no-one has already posted this (couldn't see it anywhere). News story about an £85 sandwich being sold from Selfridges (London):



'Most expensive sandwich' on sale (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4894952.stm)



Hungry shoppers are being offered the chance to eat a gourmet sandwich, but the £85 price tag might be too much for some to swallow.



Bad enough that it contains expensive beef and cheese; but also lists contents to include foie gras.

Some letter writing to Selfridges due me thinks - anyone got any good points (as in why it is 'evil' not why it is good ;) ) about foie gras that should be included (searched Vegan Soc and could not find anything)?

Their website gives a postal address, but no e-mail. If you want to write to them the Customer Relations Address is Selfridges Retail Ltd, PO Box 5157, Leicester LE3 1ZW.

Ta, Plums

[Pob]

http://www.poultry.org/foiegras.htm



Food and catering director at Selfridges on Oxford Street, Ewan Venters, said: "Well it is definitely a very healthy, a very hearty sandwich.
"Between the beef and the foie gras with black truffle mayonnaise and some fine cheese, it's a real delight."

Sorry, but foie gras, mayonnaise and cheese are anything but healthy - certainly wasn't healthy for the geese, chickens and cows forced to create it.
And whilst the beef is lower in cholesterol than regular beef, it is higher in fat.

[PlumsOfDoom]

Thanks for the link Rob. I shall get writing.

[Risker]

connect@selfridges.co.uk

[sugarmouse]

I read that tesco stores have stopped selling foie gras is that true?or maybe just some tesco stores.

[PlumsOfDoom]

For your opinions:

I am at work and really need to get on with doing some (work), so I shall have to send this later. Below is a draft of the e-mail I intend to send and I will add some links/references to reputable organisations, etc. that have info about why foie gras is cruel, big companies that have withdrawn it, etc. (any help would be appreciated :o ). What do you all think?

To Whom It May Concern:

I read with interest a story on the BBC News website regarding the £85
sandwich being sold by the Chef from your London Store [ref]. Notwithstanding the fact that the ingredients call into question the 'healthy-ness' of the sandwich reported in this story, I was dismayed to note that it also contained foie gras. I have visited the Selfridges website and been unable to ascertain whether or not foie gras is usually sold in your stores, therefore I will limit my comments purely to the sale of this sandwich; they apply, however, in equal measure to any general sales of this supposed 'delicacy'.

As I am sure buyers for your store and your public relations department must be aware, there is significant concern amongst members of the public worldwide that the methods used to produce foie gras are inhumane. In my personal opinion, I would suggest that the use of force-feeding of birds, which is necessary for production, is barbaric and intolerably cruel: and for what, an expensive 'pleasure' for pseudo-sophisticates that either do not know or are incapable of caring how it is obtained?

I respectfully request, therefore, that you familiarise yourselves with the enclosed arguments against the production and sale of foie gras and the growing number of companies boycotting this product and that you consider taking similar action within your own shops or promotions, which I will no longer patronise until you do.

Thanking you in anticipation for taking the time to consider this important
issue.

Yours faithfully, etc.

[Risker]

Good writing plums, mine just says...


Hi,
I read today that you will be selling a sandwich for £85, with one of it's ingredients being foie gras?

Can you please confirm if this is correct, as if it is I shall not be using your store while this item is on sale.

Thankyou,

[Jane M]

Found this site that goes into fois gras...kinda gross

http://www.goveg.com/feat/foie/

ummm...isn't liver the organ that is suppose to filter out impurities in the body????....and people actually eat it?????:eek:

[xwitchymagicx]

Ewewew a diseased organ for dinner. As that is what it is really isn't it? Yuck. I've never eaten it never will and I won't be happy if I see it in shops or resturants! :mad: :(

I'm not sure I could stomach it anyway knowing what it is because as soon as I found the real truth about what was in meat etc I couldn't stomach that either!

I guess some of the people who eat it don't know what exactly is it.

[tabitha]

Did you read in the paper today about the restaurant selling a sandwich for £85 that was made from Kobe beef (which is apparently massaged and kept in a condition of "sloth" when alive), also foie gras and loads of other shit. £85!!! what kind of an idiot pays £85 for a sandwich full of dead things (God I sound like FR).

[xwitchymagicx]

I know £85 what a rip off! It seems that the more money they "food" is the more cruelty it when through...hm. Ugh it wouldn't be worth it after I'd thrown it back up anyway. :mad: It is some celebrity thing though like the gold ice cream, with 28 carrot gold leafs, cavier etc. Ugh lol. I think I'll stick with my cheaper no animals suffered food thanks. ;)

[Risker]

Thank you for your e-mail dated 10th April 2006, regarding the contents of
the £85.00 sandwich.

I can confirm that the sandwich does contain foie gras. I am sorry to hear
that you will not be visiting our store whilst we are selling this product.

As a retailer, our role is to supply our customers with the products and
services they require. We do not believe that it is our place to make a
moral judgement on their behalf, provided what they wish to purchase is
lawful. In keeping with our buying policy, we will continue to supply the
gourmet market.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We look forward to welcoming
you back to Selfridges in the near future.


Kind Regards





Maryse Moorhouse
s
Selfridges Connect – Customer Relations Advisor
Extn: 22257 | Tel: 08708 370 470 | Fax: 0116-273-2111