Martin Picard is a god!

Cruel beyond belief might also apply to the clothes you wear, the electronics you use, the vehicles you drive and pretty much everything you consume.  One has to be aware, however, that not everything is done the same way and there are humane ways of raising animals for food supplies the same way there are ways to have worker’s rights.

The reality with meat — any meat — is that good quality meat only comes from animals that are treated well and are not under stress. 

Foie gras is exactly the same way.  If the geese were stressed, the quality of the foie gras that resulted would be inedible.

If you have ever been to a quality foie gras farm (which I have), the geese are not stressed at all.  In fact, the geese are generally quite excited to be fed and will often crane their necks to receive the feeding tube.

Sure, the notion that the geese are purposefully overfed and overweight does belie a bit of a “playing god” syndrome, but the claim that it is somehow torture for the animals is utter bollocks.

Certainly, there are probably unethical foie gras producers that do stress the crap out of their flocks in the name of maximizing production. Those kinds of assholes exist in every industry and, hopefully, through factual awareness they will be eliminated from the market by either market forces or legal enforcement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras_controversy#Legal_status

There’s another article I read awhile back where the foie gras farm was observed to be humane as well.  Factually, the geese have no nerves in their neck, so they don’t feel pain due to the apparatus going down their neck.  They also willingly go to the feeding chamber.  Finally, abusing the duck will bruise the tender liver, which reduces the grade of the foie gras and correspondingly the price per pound that it is sold for, so there is economic incentive for the farmers to treat the ducks gently.

I see no difference between foie gras and regular animal farming, in fact I would expect the geese to be treated better than at your average chicken farm.

(and it’s delicious)

Fine.  I’ll force feed the goose to increase the size of it’s wings/feet/eyeballs/whatever.   According to this statute that’s perfectly legal.  I wish legislators would actually read the legislation they propose.  This says that so long as I’m force feeding the goose to engorge something other than it’s liver then that is perfectly cool.  They just passed a statute that is completely impotent to do what they actually want.  Why not just say you can’t force feed geese regardless of the reason?

I did once go to a very fancy restaurant in Florida that featured a local-fare-dressed-up menu and had pimento cheese on house-made saltine-style crackers.  That was a pretty successful example of highbrow+lowbrow, but then again, come on: saltines. How can they be bad?