Here's a really interesting article on the subject (though I'm sure some of you, Russell being the obvious example, don't care for real information when passionate moral convictions are concerned):
Shock & Foie

quote:

The reality is that bringing a forkful of food to the mouth of a human in our world, be it meat or plant, is usually as much about destruction as it as about creation; sustainability merely speaks to whether there is a balance between the two. Animals are raised for human consumption, then unceremoniously slaughtered, butchered, and packaged into sometimes unrecognizable forms. Vegetables are ripped from the soil or cut from the stalk at harvest, sometimes by machines that unintentionally claim the lives of innocent wild animals along the way. Remnants are tilled under to make way for new crops.

quote:

The key to understanding the foie gras debate is to recognize that the issue has less to do with science, fact, or finding the truth about whether the treatment of these animals is humane, inhumane, or somewhere in between. Quite frankly, all of that is distraction. The only way to understand this issue is to regard it for what it truly is: naked political opportunism.

quote:

Much of the outrage being stirred up over foie gras production centers around the practice of gavage, the use of a funnel inserted into the duck’s esophagus to force-feed grain to the duck over the final 15-21 days of its life. Those who oppose gavage assert that the ducks choke, vomit, and suffer greatly because of this process. This sounds reasonable. After all, how would you like to have a tube stuffed down your throat three times a day? However, this approach is the crux of the problem with an argument meant to play upon human empathy: it anthropomorphizes an animal whose physiology is fundamentally different than ours. Ducks and geese are waterfowl. Their digestive tracts evolved to accommodate swallowing of whole fish, the occasional amphibian, and rocks for the gizzard to assist in digestion. They lack a gag reflex and their esophagus is lined not with the delicate mucus membrane found in humans, but a thick cuticle. Their windpipe opens in the middle of their tongue and they do not breathe using an abdominal diaphragm as humans do. Air passes through air sacs located in the upper torso, prior to entering the lungs. Ducks are able to breathe, even during the brief 10-15-second process of gavage.

Also, if I may provide an analogy.

If you, being already accustomed to rape, were to be held by the throat and anally raped for 15 days, filling your rectum with so much semen that it swells far beyond its normal size, that this would be morally acceptable, given that said rapist murders you before the rape actually becomes a serious health issue?

Keep in mind that said rapist would enjoy the benefits of a delicious rectum gras, so IMO the ends far justify the clearly humane treatment of your asshole.

Rofl

People can live without Foie Gras. Just eat regular ass duck. Many people don't even have the luxury of eating food on a regular basis. I'm sure Californians can find ways to cope.

What gras will they ban next? Mardi Gras?

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Nothing to see here

quote:

Originally posted by Blake People can live without Foie Gras. Just eat regular ass duck. Many people don't even have the luxury of eating food on a regular basis. I'm sure Californians can find ways to cope.

What does this have to do with anything? You managed to stretch the relativism of the anti-foie gras argument to it's breaking point.

I'm sure less than one percent of americans consume any foie gras at all over a given year. This issue isn't 'finding ways to cope' it's 'why?'

I don't eat foie gras often (couple times a year, as I'm sure most people who enjoy it do. this isn't an issue of changing peoples day to day diet). Similarly I don't eat veal often. I enjoy them, though, and certainly plan on enjoying them on occasion until I'm dead, years and years and years from now.

Look at all the bleeding-heart liberal hippies trying to say how wrong it is to breed animals to be eaten.

Douglas Adams summed this up perfectly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1nxaQhsaaw

quote:

Originally posted by djshire

That's completely irrelevant to this topic.

I really don't understand eating animals knowing that they were basically tortured before dying (Veal and Foie Gras).

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What Is Progressive Anyways? [Progressive House Classics] (November 2019)

quote:

Originally posted by Lews I really don't understand eating animals knowing that they were basically tortured before dying (just about any animal ever bred for our consumption).

fixed.