Sure this sounds wholesome and artisinal, but arguing that this isn’t torture seems to mimic the exact failed rationals and arguments that waterboarding isn’t torture.

I’m not in favour of fois gras nor would I be cheering for a ban on it. But to judge the industry on the how humane this place is would be the same as banning just it because one farm keeps the ducks penned up with dead animals 24 hrs a day.

Besides that, I think all this bad rap about foie gras is also a way for the fast-food industry to keep americans in their “no-culture” food model, when logically like any developped country, they should have access to this kind of quality products.

So you can argue on the human-made process, the fact of forcing the birds to create this steatosis. But being horrified of the steatosis itself is ludicrous.

God bless the first world.

Here is a dumb joke I just made up to celebrate how fortunate we all are:

“What do you call PETA after foie gras get outlawed?”

“rebel without a gras”

Nature is crueler than humans are. That duck should be so fortunate to have it’s belly fattened than starve on a frozen bank only to be eaten by hungry fox.

Me, I don’t eat it, I don’t like it, but I can appreciate it and dislike it at the same time.

Boy what a rambling post. Sorry for the waste of bits.

Since I eat meat, I’d prefer people who are trying to be conscientious of both animals and people to be producing that meat.

Focusing on one animal when the whole system is so f’d up doesn’t change the system.

I recommend we shop there, you say we shouldn’t. What’s your goal? Mine is the ethical husbandry of animals.

Well, husbandry is one thing. Treatment is another.

These people seem to be fairly kind in their treatment of geese, but they don’t allow husbandry. All the males are shipped off to Trinidad(?!?!). They are raised for slaughter, and so are their husbands. This is about meat. Husbandry doesn’t factor in at all.

Trinidad? Yes, apparently Trinidad. Go figure, huh?

You slag off the whole industry as immoral, and state that the best actors deserve the same moral judgement as the worst. How am I to believe, based on what you communicated, that you would even consider buying fois gras? Maybe you meant something else, but what you said was pretty clear.

fwiw, i think the stuff is tasty, in tiny amounts, rarely. And I do have the benefit of knowing where mine comes from.

Labels are not perfect, but they can be a useful and important signal.

Also I wouldn’t be surprise if less stressed animals tasted better, which matters to the high-end chefs and brands that serve foie gras.

I’m having a hard time seeing that no matter how nicely you feed a bird, forcing it to have a liver expand over 600% normal is cruel. Surely anyone can see this? Right?

Anyone that has no idea what they are talking about can see this.

It’s pretty sad watching a normally smart crowd succumb to the same fear-mongering anti-information types of stories that get bashed so regularly on this blog.

Why don’t you all practice what you preach and read up on something before you post stupid reactions about it?

How about starting here: http://www.offalgood.com/blog/resources/fight-for-your-right-for-foie-gras

That’s where all the organophosphates and heavy metals get concentrated. You know, those pollutants that were pumped into the environment so you could sit on your couch and “surf” the Internet? Yeah, those. Your bird livers are dripping with that kind of stuff.

Liver is filter tissue. Everything the bird breathes or eats that is so bad for it that it can’t even be pooped out ends up in the liver. Bon Apetit!

it really is pathetic the hoops people will jump through to rationalize brutalizing animals.

Oh, grow up. No animal survives without “exploiting” some other living thing, whether it be a plant — which has just as much right to survive as an animal — or some other animal. The only obligation we have is to avoid causing needless suffering.

As zoologists, animal experts and veterinarians have all asserted that gavage, the method used to fatten goose and duck livers in foie gras production, to be painless and to cause no discomfort whatsoever, eating foie gras is no different from eating meat. In fact, it is BETTER than eating factory farmed meat.

However, if you truly wish to avoid harming other living organisms, please do feel free to remove yourself from the food chain; I certainly won’t mind.

you mean EATING a dog.

I live with a cat. I would never eat her.

(but under the right circumstances, she would eat me. Starting with my nose. But I still love her. Nevertheless.)

Did you have some other point or were you just detracting from my point without the courtesy of disagreeing with it?

http://tinyurl.com/2d4qxgq

However, the article in question doesn’t really try to answer the question, “Is foie gras ethical?” I think a better way of phrasing it is “can foie gras EVER be ethically produced?” It seems to me that the answer is “yes”, from the video in the article that the author claimed was similar to what he saw. Mind you, it doesn’t really look like the goose particularly enjoys the process, but neither is it showing significant signs of distress and discomfort immediately after the procedure, which is gratifyingly quick.

If, as the author claims, all 3 producers in the US are similarly run and similarly ethical in their treatment of the animals, I would be hard-pressed to claim that this is any worse or any more unethical than any large-scale farming, for meat or dairy or leather or wool. Sheep seem a lot more freaked about getting sheared than those geese seemed about getting force-fed.

So if the claim is true regarding the US-based producers, it seems that the answer is simple: if you care about ethically-produced foie gras, insist on domestic. In this day of cheap overnight shipping, it seems like a no-brainer.

Unless I’m misreading some of these arguments, some commenters are saying “You should feel bad about how other farms do this, even if you buy yours from a farm you know doesn’t.” Besides being wrong in general, this is the second largest foie gras farm in the country, and there are only three, as has been mentioned before.

The reason bird livers work like this is their adaptation to migration. Ecology is a necessity of foie gras, apparently.

The most interesting thing in that whole article, to me? Apparently, ducks breathe through their tongues. Wait, what? Personally, I’m going to go look that up tomorrow.

That’s not the same as saying “These people who are really nice to their goats are EXACTLY AS BAD as these people who kick their goats for fun and profit.”

Gee, it’s almost as if duck physiology actually differs from human physiology! And maybe we shouldn’t judge what happens to ducks by whether we’d like the same to happen to us without understanding the differences between ducks and humans.

Foie gras is an amazingly delicacy and utilizing it to sustain my life force on occasion has resulted in several pleasurable dining experiences.