However, it did get described as being fucking delicious by someone.

Mileage might vary but I think stunts like this do not really work. Yes there are a lot of really silly food items out there that cost way too much with an unjustified price tag and people are only doing it for the prestige. Bottle service has always puzzled me. But it seems wasteful to stock the expensive stuff to make a point and as I said before, people who would spend this much on a burger sadly do not care about whether they are seen as douches or not. People who do care are not going to buy the burger even if curious about the taste.

And I’m not a vegetarian and generally enjoy most of the items listed. I just have a notion of guilt that prevents me from spending 600 dollars on one food item.

First of all, I am not a vegetarian – I love tasty meats and have eaten my fair share of the animal kingdom. My position on foie is informed by the idea that expecting animals to suffer in excess of what is necessary for me to eat them is not something we have the right to do. I also get and appreciate the idea behind your burger (we also have hoards of insufferable food wankers here in Australia) but my comment was specifically IRT your inclusion of foie. I don’t own any apple products for the exact reasons you mention and if I could purchase a phone that is guaranteed to be produced by people working under humane conditions I would. Also I always buy fruit grown in Australia – I even ensure the juice I buy is made from 100% Australian fruit. Australia has good labour laws and minimum wages that protect workers. We also don’t have the kinds of problems you have in the States with large-scale agribusiness and a corrupt FDA. Our hands *are* all dirty to some extent but as I stated above I don’t believe it is right to expect an animal to be more uncomfortable than necessary for the alleged benefit of making my food tastier.

I agree that I should have written that your use of foie in the burger perpetuates the idea it is a luxury food. My bad judgement in word choice. I see this perpetuation as a problem as being a foodie is the latest idiotic trend. Eating exotic foods and instagramming a pic of it is the latest thing to do and if these hipsters (note: I’m not talking about all foodies, I’m talking about the ones doing it because of the trend) are presented with the idea that foie is an exotic, desirable food then demand and consumption levels will undoubtedly increase. I’m not claiming US consumption is numerically significant, but US chefs and bloggers who promote the food are certainly driving demand and noob consumers are quite likely to buy the cheapest possible product (likely to not be produced ethically).

I’m not sure why you linked to viva… they’re arguing against your position. Plus I cannot find the figure you referenced anywhere on the site. Do you have any proof of your assertion that most of the foie consumed in Canada and the US is domestically produced? Considering the French influence on Canada, the legal status of gavage in Canada plus the fact that the production in Canada has been increasing in recent years I don’t think these facts bode well for your argument.

I believe you are wrong about use of gavage in France. My understanding (as supported by this french law) is that in order for foie to be sold as foie gras in France it MUST be produced using the gavage method. My point IRT China’s production still stands as the figures for production that you referenced are from 2005. The guy in the article you tried to link (you can’t put brackets at the end of weblinks without a space at the end) says that they aim to increase production up to 1000 tons/year over the next 5 years. The article I originally linked about the new plant states that China does product 1000 tons/year already. Extrapolating the figure in the xinhuanet article (100 tons from 200,000 birds) and applying it to the new production facility being planned (which will have 2 million geese and 8 million ducks) it is more than safe to say China’s production is easily more than 0.6% of world supply today (maybe 5%?) and is only set to grow.

The reason I didn’t include the commentary by the AVMA is because I don’t believe them to be objective. Below the very quote you referenced, Wikipedia has the inclusion of this: “Critics of the AVMA have stated that the organization tends to defend the economic interests of agribusiness over animal welfare, and that it has also declined to take a position against other controversial practices such as forced molting and gestation crates.”

IRT the HuffPo article, the definition of “damage” is up for debate. There may be no physical signs of damage but it is not right to assume that increasing the physical size of an animal’s liver to 10 times its normal size is going to be a comfortable thing to endure. As stated in my original comment, I think it is important to note that force-fed birds avoid feeding areas compared to non force-fed birds who actively hang around the feeding area. How do you explain this behaviour if you believe the practice is not unpleasant for the animal?

IRT Egypt: the discovery of animal’s ability to gorge may have come accidentally but once discovered it became normal practice to force feed: “There are many depictions of animals being force-fed, among them cranes, hyaenas and geese.”

It seems to me that there are a number of holes in your argument. Your presumptuous pejorative use of the word ‘vegetarian’ and suggestion that we need schooling isn’t supported by the evidence you provided. As I said at the top, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I don’t expect that I’ve changed your opinion but I just hope the information presented here will allow people to make better informed decisions about the ethics of eating foods produced at the the expense of the comfort of animals.

:)

There’s so much to answer…I’ll do my best and hit the points you bring up in order…

*deep breath*

Before I jump into it, I just want to point out that I’m not arguing that eating foie (or any meat for that matter) is totally ethical or moral thing. I realize that an animal is suffering in some respect and dying in order to feed me something that I don’t *require* to live. It’s kinda fucked up. That said, I’m ok with that. I think we make a number of choices just by living in this society that result in our comfort/happiness and the suffering of someone else. Perhaps a bad example but, your fancy iPhone was made in a factory in China staffed by people that are treated little better than corralled animals – it’s messed up. The fruit you eat that’s been imported from Mexico – you think those farm workers that picked it for you were living in optimal conditions? All I’m saying by this is that all of our hands are a little dirty based on the choices we make. Some of us hold certain things more dear to our hearts than others but, that doesn’t make our choices any less bad. I know eating meat isn’t the most ethical/moral thing but, I’m ok with that…and I try to mitigate the horribleness of what I do by caring about where my meat comes from and how it is raised.

Ok…now, on to business.

Foie Gras *is* a luxury food, so I feel that rather than “increasing” the view that it is a luxury food, my use of it merely perpetuates that view. However, I’d like to think that it does so in a way that ridicules those that top their burgers with it. The whole point of the DB is that it is a completely unnecessary burger topped with ridiculous unnecessary things that should never be served together. 

Percentages can be very misleading – let’s look at the numbers and see if American consumption is significant.

France, producing 78% of the world’s Foie is responsible for 18,450 tons of foie (2005 numbers)In that same year France consumed 19,000 tons of foieSo, over 78% of the foie in the world is eaten in France. 
[http://news.xinhuanet.com/engl...]

The US and Canada (where most of the Foie you find domestically comes from) are only responsible for 2.4% of the foie in the world 
[http://www.viva.org.uk/campaig...]

The next largest producer after France is Hungary, which is responsible for 8.2% (or 1,920 tons) of foie. Most of it being exported to (drumroll, please)…France.
[http://www.foodnavigator.com/F...]

So, now we’re at about 86% of world foie consumption just counting Hungary and France…doesn’t seem there’s too much left for the USofA to be a significant consumer of foie…

In fact, there are only 3 foie farms in the US and they all use rubber tubes and more humane feeding methods.[http://www.seriouseats.com/201...]

You also seem to skew the situation in France to meet your beliefs. In France, it is law that in order to get the official designation as Foie Gras it must be produced through force feeding methods – similar to Champagne needing to be produced in the Champagne region. That doesn’t mean that ALL the stuff we call foie that comes from France was produced using the gavage methods. In fact, there are a number of French producers that use the more natural self-gorging methods.

Your quote about Chinese production is similarly misleading – the situation there is an anomaly as opposed to the rule. China only produces 0.6% of world foie. Additionally, that product rarely if ever makes it to the USA.

Then fun doesn’t stop there – you also are presenting only part of the story in quoting your research. 

In contrast to Dr. Ward Stone’s observations, Dr. Robert P. Gordon ”…visited a farm in New York. “After being on the premises, my position changed dramatically,” Dr. Gordon said. “I did not see animals I would consider distressed, and I didn’t see pain and suffering.” He said it is more distressing to take a rectal temperature in a cat. He cautioned against anthropomorphism, which is different from the human-animal bond…”[http://www.avma.org/onlnews/ja...]

Take this one with a grain of salt but, “Michael Ginor, owner of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, author of Foie Gras… A Passion, claims his birds come to him to be fed and says this is important because “a stressed or hurt bird won’t eat and digest well or produce a foie gras.”. Granted, this dude has a very lucrative reason to hold his position but, one point he makes in that sentence is accurate – a stressed or hurt animal will not make for good eating. 

True that the article I linked wasn’t the best one but, I didn’t want to write  a long well researched missive (there goes that plan) and just pulled the first thing I found. So, to make up for that failure on my part, here are some well written and more resonant articles that make the same point as that crappy article:

A strong article, including first-hand account of a no access denied exploration of a foie farm. And nice to know that EVERY part of the animal is used, not just the liver.
http://www.seriouseats.com/201…

An opinion article but no less convincing. Here’s a quote from it:  ”What appears to be a gruesome act of quickly putting a tube down the duck or goose’s throat known as ‘gavage,’ does not cause damage to the animal.”[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...]

Super long article but, heavily researched. (spoiler: the answer to the question posed in the title is “no”)
http://www.villagevoice.com/20…

That said, the point about Egyptians discovering foie is accurate – they didn’t just pick up a duck and start cramming food down it’s throat. They learned that the yummy liver was made when these animals naturally gorged themselves. Granted, they then turned this into a “forced” practice but, the OG foie was thanks to the gluttony of the animal.

Judging by what I’ve written above I’d say it’s you who needs a little schooling, but then I’m not sure if your comments are for the purpose of convincing us or yourself that foie gras is unethical.

… and I don’t buy from Sousa but, get it from an equally reputable domestic producer.

Keep fighting the good fight :)

I’ve read quite a bit, well as much as I care to (from different sources), and from what I gather the standard means of foie gras production doesn’t involve any ‘free range’ element, I’m all ears though, feel free to point me in the direction of a source that states as much. Considering that most eggs don’t even come from free range chickens, I’d find it hard to believe that foie gras were any different.
That said, it’s hardly a product that requires someone to ‘want’ to dislike it, on the contrary, I think it requires quite a lot of effort to justify it.

If someone wants to eat foie gras, then I can’t stop them, and in a face-to-face environment I probably wouldn’t even call them out on it; but please just take it for what it is, a cruel and unnecessary luxury food that comes at the expense of a miserable life. It requires no defence, because there isn’t one.

You wouldn’t have thought it would be such a hard-fought argument that foie gras is cruel and unnecessary; but I guess for some people a tasty snack is more important than suffering, and they’ll be willing to justify it however they can.

I also don’t buy your assertion that American consumption of foie gras is insignificant, because American tastes bear huge influence on what happens on the world stage. There are as many of you as there are English speakers in the rest of the world. An American company has just invested $100 mil in a plant in China, bastion of cruelty-free meat production. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of foie gras is produced using the gavage method. The top 4 countries that produce foie gras (France, Hungary, Bulgaria & China) account for over 90% of production and of course force-feeding is employed in all of these countries. In France (78%) it is law that foie gras must be produced using forced feeding methods. Furthermore, as is written in this article: “The corn that is used in the West to feed the geese or ducks is clean. In China, corn is often moldy. It contains cancer-causing aflatoxin. This is commonly detected by China’s food industry and commerce departments. Geese or ducks subject to such a diet will be very unhealthy”.

The fun doesn’t stop there. According to the EU Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Welfare the mortality rate of birds that are force fed is 2-4% of animal population, compared to %0.2 for birds that are not force fed. The abovelinked wikipedia page goes on to say “Other studies looked at behavioral aversion to the feeding process and found that force fed ducks avoided the feeding pen when given a choice, whereas a majority of the control group not being force fed would enter the feeding pen voluntarily.”. Sounds like they love it!

Then there’s this: Dr. Ward Stone, wildlife pathologist with the NYSDEC and Adjunct Professor at SUNY has on several occasions conducted post-mortems on ducks that died from force feeding, including from the same farm a few months after Mr. Downes’ visit.[26] In September 2005, he writes, “…the short tortured lives of ducks raised for Foie Gras is well outside the norm of farm practice. Having seen the pathology that occurs from Foie Gras production, I strongly recommend that this practice be outlawed.”

The article you linked to is simply written by a guy who is trying to smugly justify his choice to eat foie gras because he likes it, and seems to be an attempt to whitewash the topic through sneaky means. He points out that the practice has been around since it was created in Ancient Egypt… what he (and you) doesn’t point out is that they force fed the birds too. He then craps on for the majority of the post with bad puns, anecdotes from his mother about a friendly French foie gras producer (who’s totally gonna tell the truth, right?) who laughs off questions about the cruelty of the practice and information about ONE GUY and the American who is copying him in producing foie gras using non-gavage methods.

This article has said American chef describing his own experiments with producing ethical foie gras as “failed gras”… sounds really successful. I note that your “article” includes the following full disclosure links: http://cmp.ly/4 http://cmp.ly/5 .. oh, so you mean to say the author has a ‘business relationship’ and an ‘affiliate relationship’ with those in his story? Bet you it’s completely objective then, amirite? It would be good if the guy actually listed who he’s affiliated with because otherwise it’s only “as little disclosure as is legally possible”… not quite the same legal benchmark as full disclosure. I won’t bother presenting a laundry list of the logical fallacies both you and the article author have committed in making your arguments because there’s no need to embarrass you further.

Judging by what I’ve written above I’d say it’s you who needs a little schooling, but then I’m not sure if your comments are for the purpose of convincing us or yourself that foie gras is ethical. In any case I assume your burger contains Sousa’s foie gras because you said yourself that it’s “about as ethical as you can get”… or was that just more weasel words?

(Thanks mods.. look at all this vertical space that got wasted where my 5 line vitriol would have sufficed)

PS Have a picture of a bird enjoying his dinner. Yum Yum!

As for the roaming geese/ducks in Foie production – you are incorrect in stating that it involves “no roaming”. Most of the life of the animal is spent roaming fairly freely outdoors. It’s only in the last 90 days of life that the animal gets force fed and is kept indoors (in some cases – others let them roam free and only cage them for the feeding).

It feels like you want to hate every aspect of foie on principle but, you should really research it from both ends of the spectrum. It’s like just getting your news from FOX – yer getting a bit of a slanted story…

However Foie Gras that’s been produced ‘properly’ (97% of it last I checked) involves no ‘roaming’ livestock. What you’re referring to sounds more like the processes involved in producing ethical foie gras, which is freerange and ‘enabled’, rather than forced; and represents a vast minority of what’s on offer.

It seems that the worse we treat animals the more luxurious the end product. Maybe it’ll be ‘Beaten Cats in a Bag Burgers’ next. Stick a high enough price tag on it and it’ll be all the rage.

You do realize that you’re perpetuating an urban legend?

Stoner/drug myths will never die.

:P