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

[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. >:)