Foie gras, sustainability, and fancy restaurants.

[beetiger]

A very interesting and well thought out opinion piece by the owner of an upscale San Francisco restaurant, concerning the foie gras issues and general issues of food choice.

Thoughts welcome.

Comments

[bossgoji.livejournal.com]

Unrelated note: I got the crafty thing you sent! Eeee, I've actually been needing a decent bag, and this one is AWESOME. Made of win, hon. <3

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Good essay over there.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Diminished by using an argumentative fallacy to support. That of 'But car transport costs lives, and no one is as active to stop that! So obviously convenience and liberty wins out.' It's a defensive comparison that chooses a similar subject with the same issues, and uses the lack of similar preventative actions on that issue as defence for lack of action on the food chain.

What it ignores or glosses over is that there *are* car safety campaigns, efforts to keep and reduce speed limits, efforts to reduce car emissions, efforts to increase and improve rail transport... And yes, there *are* radicals who'd like to ban all private car ownership, just as many as there are fruitarians.

"Hey, duck! Be careful! Broken glass!"

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Bleah. Made me feel like I was watching Irwin Mainway defend his products on Consumer Probe. "Hey, lady! Everybody gotta suffer! Why, I could step on a little puppy on the way to the kitchen! Yeah, where are the activists there?" The insinuation that this whole issue is trivial until we tackle world hunger(?!) struck me as especially low, the sort of tactic activists get real fucking sick of after their first couple debates.

And it's a really bad sign that I feel so moved to trash this essay... since I've never been especially opposed to foie gras. In fact, I think I'm more inclined to look into those claims about duck and goose feeding now that I've read it, which had sounded plausible to me before, because now I'm suspicious...

Re: "Hey, duck! Be careful! Broken glass!"

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I saw it done on a farm in France some years ago, which was where I first heard about the idea that foie gras was a horrible animal-rights issue. He's quite right that the ducks don't mind. You've never seen a healthier flock of birds than the ones ten days from slaughter on that foie gras farm.

I believe the general consensus in France now is that American activists need to stick with their McDonald's and stay out of issues involving real food - since they clearly know nothing about it.

Re: "Hey, duck! Be careful! Broken glass!"

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

I don't think I quite took the same message out of it. I thought he wielded rhetoric poorly, but I really read it as saying "If you actually care about where your food comes from, then foie gras is a distraction; something to give you a hollow sense of good feeling while you're ignoring the issue of mass factory farming." Honestly, I thought he made a fairly good case on that front, but maybe it's because I'm already fairly aware of the evidence he referred to.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I came to that decision about foie gras when I was living in France, for the same reason. I had it on good authority that the ducks simply didn't care about the tube feeding, and if they didn't care about it or get stressed by it, then it was no worse than any other meat product to produce - and better than many.

My biggest problem with the article is that it never really comes back to the buzzword from which it began: sustainability. He finishes up with, "The foie gras production issue is a straw man argument that activists are using to deflect attention from important matters," but he barely touches on those more important matters. If foie gras isn't it, what is, and even bigger than that, what is he doing as a restaurant owner to encourage debate in these issues that make sense? He condemns one argument but barely suggests a replacement and doesn't at any point broaden his essay to include, "We came down in favour of foie gras, but we've taken a stand on this other meat issue in this way."

Some of his rhetorical devices aren't as well developed as they could be - notably the comparison to vehicle accidents. There are a lot of comparisons he could have drawn between highway safety activists and food safety activists, who probably have a lot of impact on his business. A connection to the notion of sustainability comes up there.

In any case. I'm groggy and not as articulate as I'd like to be, but while I agreed with his conclusions, I was not terribly impressed at how they were arrived at.

[rowyn]

That was sort of my thought, too. Some of the rhetorical choices were pretty poor, but two points were well made -- that (a) actual reaction of fowl to force feeding suggests it's not a big deal and (b) the anti-foie-gras debate exists largely because fois gras producers have no clout and can't mount an effective defense. It'd probably be a stronger essay if most of the rest were ditched. >:)

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

I recall the mess that became of forcing McDonald's to abandon the polystyrene foam containers for hamburgers in favor of cardboard ones in Finland. Once life cycle analysis became more accepted practice, it was determined that overall cardboard containers had a significantly higher environmental impact. (This was before the use of recycled material and more environmentally friendly bleaching methods, though.)

That really is a big problem of mine with the environmental movement -- a lot of it was "feel good" activism where people who didn't understand the complexity of issues bandwagoned for easy to understand causes. Like a campaign against building more nuclear power, and putting resources towards wind energy instead. When the construction of wind power in the region began, the same people now opposed it due to the visual impact and habitat destruction.

I stand fully behind sustainable development, but figuring out what is and isn't sustainable is a lot harder than it seems.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

And probably also before we understood the greater implications of polystyrene's accumulation and particular degradation in oceanic environments. (ie, the Sargasso Sea and Pacific Gyre plastic soup.)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Definitely an excellent essay. I've never had foie gras, but I can't see any good reason to ban it, and there seem many vastly more important food issues to worry about. Then again, while I believe farm animals should be treated humanely, I find PETA and the other "animal rights" organizations to mostly be composed of people who are either reprehensible, utterly moronic, or both.