The Washington Post has the story.
Why I’m proud to serve foie gras. But first, let me take your concerns seriously. By Bart Hutchins
Bart Hutchins is the chef and owner of Butterworth’s in Washington, D.C.
"There is now a proposed ballot initiative moving through Washington that would ban foie gras entirely. No producing it, no selling or serving it. Fines between $1,000 and $5,000 per violation. License suspension for repeat offenses
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""I am asking you to not sign the petition. But first I want to do something the other side rarely does, which is to take their concerns seriously.
"Gavage — force-feeding through a tube inserted down a bird’s throat — looks terrible. I know because I have seen it. I understand completely why someone sees footage of it and reacts with horror. If you imagine the same thing done to human beings, it looks like violence.
"But here is what I also know, and what the activists with the megaphones do not know and do not want to know because it would complicate the argument they have decided to make.
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' A duck’s esophagus, where the gavage tube is inserted, is desensitized, without a gag reflex, and it is capable of swallowing whole crustaceans and scaly fish in the wild. Its windpipe is separate from the esophagus, meaning the gavage process has no impact on breathing. More importantly, this overfeeding is something the bird does naturally. Before their annual migration, ducks gorge — they stuff themselves with excess food. The calories are stored as fat, not only in the liver but in the expanded esophagus. (The verb “gorge” comes from this behavior.) What foie gras farming does is amplify a natural biological process rather than invent a cruel one .
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"The producer I buy foie gras from exemplifies the kind of care and attention good farming demands. Their ducks are raised for 15 weeks, about twice the poultry industry standard, in open barns, on a vegetarian diet. Force-feeding by hand happens three times a day for the final three weeks. Each feeding takes approximately 1½ seconds, and, from my observation, the ducks barely seem to notice it."
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My previous posts about foie gras.
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