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Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

nytimes.com

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Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#61

Post by eurg »

calf wrote: post #28

If I were an investor I would ask Hudson Valley and the other specialty farms to look into GMO and lab-grown foie. Maybe liver is easier to do than muscle tissue. Foie tastes like magical butter and it would be wonderful if there was a more ethical way to have it.

There is: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_...

He talks about a farmer who is not force feeding the animals, but instead prepares the grassland such that those animals voluntarily eat themselves into a fat liver. Taste seems to be superb, for those who eat animals for fun.

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#62

Post by eurg »

boudin wrote: post #17
computerex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The animals are literally force fed with a tube. The animal's liver swells to many times its normal size. I am not sure what you are talking about. There is a reason why this practice is controversial to begin with. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

The actual fact that geese can eat that much and double size (or more) is natural and necessary for their migration. It's possible to make foie gras by just letting the goose eating itself. Acording to my parents when they were living on farms when young, that's the way they were doing it. Just banning the practice of force feeding would make more sense. You can find a few things online about those alternative way ht…

As linked somewhere else, but for video affine people, and directly relevant, see this old Ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_...

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#63

Post by eurg »

boudin wrote: post #17
computerex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The animals are literally force fed with a tube. The animal's liver swells to many times its normal size. I am not sure what you are talking about. There is a reason why this practice is controversial to begin with. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

The actual fact that geese can eat that much and double size (or more) is natural and necessary for their migration. It's possible to make foie gras by just letting the goose eating itself. Acording to my parents when they were living on farms when young, that's the way they were doing it. Just banning the practice of force feeding would make more sense. You can find a few things online about those alternative way ht…

Below someone quoted this: "it will be assumed that all foie gras came from duck or geese that have been force-fed unless “documentary” evidence is provided to the contrary."

So, non-force-feed remains legal.

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#64

Post by donw »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #34
donw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is entirely unfair that restaurants be required to prove origin when challenged, especially for commonly counterfeited ingredients. Let's say that I go to a restaurant that claims they only use true cinnamon and Kashmir saffron to flavor a cinnamon roll, which they sell at a premium because of the high-quality ingredients. When challenged, that restaurant needs to be able to show proof that they are…

> Let's say that I go to a restaurant that claims they only use true cinnamon and Kashmir saffron to flavor a cinnamon roll, which they sell at a premium because of the high-quality ingredients. > When challenged, that restaurant needs to be able to show proof that they are delivering as advertised. > If it turns out that they were instead using artificial flavors and colors, then they are guilty of fraud, and the pu…

> Can the punishment also be scaled to the harm, or potential harm, caused by the fraud? In a case like this, that would be nothing.

The harm is indeed relevant! "Crimes" without a victim, or where the victim and the perpetrator are the same person, should not be crimes.

But in this case, the harm is decidedly not nothing:

(1) How many consumers chose "Cakes of Deceit" over their competition, "A Taste of Honesty", on account of those premium ingredients? This pushes other businesses to engage in dishonest behavior in order to level the playing field.

(2) How many customers paid more for the "premium" offering because of its ingredients? What would they have paid had they known the truth? The difference between these two is the amount of money stolen from the customers.

(3) What is the economic impact to the sellers of the premium ingredients? Presumably, customers eating at "Cakes of Deceit" will come out with the opinion that "Kashmir Saffron" and "True Cinnamon" aren't any different than the cheap stuff.

This is far from a case of "no harm, no foul"

Also, you scale punishment to fit the difficulty of detection -- and I would argue, the guilty's ability to pay -- as it keeps the risk-reward equation balanced.

Imagine a shoplifter, Alice. She is caught stealing a $10 pack of cigarettes from the corner liquor store.

Alice offers to pay for the cigarettes once she is caught.

Sounds fair, right?

Suppose that we know that there is a one in ten chance of catching a shoplifter. That means for every ten times Alice tries to shoplift those $10 packs of cigarettes, she'll escape punishment nine times, and get caught once.

The corner store would be out $90 in goods in this case. Alice would be out the $10 for a single legitimate purchase. So we adjust the punishment upwards to make the process of shoplifting unpalatable to Alice in any case.

Now, what if Alice is wealthy, and just stealing for the thrill of it?

Well, a $200 fine probably won't mean much to her. So we scale the punishment until it does.

The Swiss do this, and I highly support it. If we are going to make something illegal -- which we do far too much, I must admit -- being wealthy shouldn't be equivalent to a Get Out Of Jail Free card.

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#65

Post by boudin »

eurg wrote: post #63
boudin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual fact that geese can eat that much and double size (or more) is natural and necessary for their migration. It's possible to make foie gras by just letting the goose eating itself. Acording to my parents when they were living on farms when young, that's the way they were doing it. Just banning the practice of force feeding would make more sense. You can find a few things online about those alternative way ht…

Below someone quoted this: "it will be assumed that all foie gras came from duck or geese that have been force-fed unless “documentary” evidence is provided to the contrary." So, non-force-feed remains legal.

I had missed that, thanks!

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#66

Post by gadders »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #51

Nice case of double standards. The practice of force feeding geese looks more cruel than it is. It's basically nothing compared to what we routinely do to chickens and other farm animals. Industrial chicken farming is infinitely more cruel compared to this. We're talking about organically farmed birds that are kept such that they are fattened up and delicious (aka. in good health) in a way that is the complete opposi…

I would argue that live plucking geese for goose down as is just as unpleasant for the goose as force-feeding. Some unfortunate geese even have to suffer through both.

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#67

Post by carlmr »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #51

Nice case of double standards. The practice of force feeding geese looks more cruel than it is. It's basically nothing compared to what we routinely do to chickens and other farm animals. Industrial chicken farming is infinitely more cruel compared to this. We're talking about organically farmed birds that are kept such that they are fattened up and delicious (aka. in good health) in a way that is the complete opposi…

>We're talking about organically farmed birds that are kept such that they are fattened up and delicious (aka. in good health)

A fatty liver is by definition the opposite of good health.

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#68

Post by ivanhoe »

oh_sigh wrote: post #57
jillesvangurp wrote: post #51

Nice case of double standards. The practice of force feeding geese looks more cruel than it is. It's basically nothing compared to what we routinely do to chickens and other farm animals. Industrial chicken farming is infinitely more cruel compared to this. We're talking about organically farmed birds that are kept such that they are fattened up and delicious (aka. in good health) in a way that is the complete opposi…

Also, there is some. Anthropocentric thinking going on. A person thinks they wouldn't want a funnel stuck down their throat and forced fed grain. Yet, the birds will line up for it and seem to really enjoy it(for one, they don't have a gag reflex)

That's also very similar to how baby birds are fed by their parents.

Re: Foie Gras, Served in 1k Restaurants in NYC, Is Banned

#69

Post by scandinavegan »

dkersten wrote: post #43
seanwilson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> push by vegetarians to ban meat eating Milk and egg production still involve animals being killed for meat though e.g. female diary cows are killed for meat when they stop producing enough milk after a few years and males from diary cows are killed within a month of being born as veal.

I see no issue with free range eggs from a local keeping chickens (where I know that they are, indeed, well treated, well kept and free range) since they lay eggs most days whether you eat them or not and if you don’t use them, they would rot or attract rodents.

How many eggs would each person get to eat per year using that production method? We surely wouldn't be able to keep boiling them, frying them, using them in most baked goods, and so on, because production would drop to a fraction of what it currently is.

I'm vegan, and on my honeymoon we went to a place where hens ran around free in the villages and would crawl underneath bushes to sleep for the night. Even I wouldn't see any ethical problems with humans grabbing unfertilized eggs they found under bushes each morning, but as I said, how many people would that feed?

It's the same as me having much less of a problem with hunting than I do factory farming, because a bullet and instant death, or at least within a couple of minutes, is a much better life for the animal than factory farming. But if we limited meat eating to only that being hunted, people would get to eat a small fraction of the meat they eat today.

Or rather, price would probably be so high that only the most well-off could afford the eggs and meat in that world. If you're in that group you might still get eggs and meat, otherwise not. Still, people who use these two examples as ethical ways of getting eggs and meat must also agree that we would need plant-based alternatives for almost all our current uses.

Also, as of 2013, 98% of hens in the US was in cages, and 2% free-range:

https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/5235021/Statistics-Laying-hens...

In the EU, it was 60% cage, 25% barn, 12% free-range, and 3% organic. At least for Sweden, free-range can still be indoors, but organic requires access to the outside. So even moving only to current free-range eggs would mean a drastic reduction of consumption.

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