Letters to the Editor
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But...but...
...I LIKE foie gras! And I live in California! I'd go buy a large hunk of it right now, except I'm trying to lose a few pounds and doing that would derail my efforts. I eat it maybe twice a year or so.
Goodness, as another astute letter writer pointed out, foie gras is a French staple, and indeed they would find it a bit ridiculous that we'd legislate the consumption of a low-grossing speciality product while not seeking a solution to the countless obese children downing drive-through meals 3x a day.
By the way, banning trans-fats doesn't solve the problem of our fast-food nation. It just allows for different cheaply manufactured fats to become the staple to those diets. But that doesn't make a biggie fries a safe meal. And outlawing biggie fries doesn't make legislators effective in protecting and representing the needs and interests of their citizenry.
Screw the diet. I'm going to get a nice bit of foie gras while I can. I don't travel overseas enough to not feel deprived simply by my lack of choice.
Hey...isn't the ability to make independant and free choices regarding how we spend our money part of, I dunno, being American?
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daria said: "I guess the animal activists have their priorities too, just not ones with a human face."
what does that have to do with the price of foie gras in new jersey? are you seriously contending that not eating foie gras hurts humans more than humans eating foie gras hurts ducks? if you are contending that, you are an idiot. if you are not contending that, your statement is irrelevant and pointless.
most animal rights activists care a lot about humans and are very pro-human rights. it's just that to us, human rights are more about things like the right to be free from torture, the right to be free from discrimination and prejudice, the right to a living wage, the right to affordable health care, etc. -- the "right to eat gourmet duck livers" is not one of the human "rights" we are particularly concerned about.
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Hey idiots
It is no ones goddamn business whether I choose to eat foie gras. You idiots who want to legislate EVERYTHING really irritate me with your self righteous and sanctimonious ranting. You sound just as shrill and obnoxious as Ann Coulter. The far left is no different from the far right, you both want to legislate humanity into a little tidy box.
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Using fallacy to provoke absolutism.
PETA and other extreme animal rights groups love to engage in a little game that biologists like to call "anthropomorphizing" -- they ascribe human consciousness to animals, presuming that an animal must feel things the same way, on the same level of consciousness as a human. They do this to horrify us into believing that many things are "cruel" when they might not necessarily be. A duck and a goose have a different brain, a different nervous system and a different digestive system. As many have pointed out, the gorging reflex in a duck or goose is perfectly normal, and as for whether the steel tube is really a torment to them, well, what constitutes "torment" to an animal whose brain pan is literally smaller than a golf ball is open to question. It's dependent on how and whether they have nerve endings, and whether they even have the ability to neurologically process anything other than very basic things like pain or hunger or pleasure.
It's a disingenuous tactic designed to arouse people's emotions, and turn them into the kind of spluttering, vituperative, name-calling bigots who have been writing some of the response letters to this article.
Then,they turn around and do something even worse -- engaging in the kind of inhumane torment (invading privacy, vandalism, threatening physical violence, etc.) to HUMANS who we do know feel those effects. And we're supposed to applaud them and call them heroes because they are so willing to torture humans to save animals who probably don't appreciate that they are being "saved" in the first place.
Do I think that factory slaughterhouses are A-OK? No. Do I think they should be held to the highest standards possible? Sure. Are some foie gras producers engaging in unnecessarily "cruel" feeding practices? Maybe. But clearly there's at least one that isn't -- witenssed first hand by a vet. Eliminating unnecessary waste or wantonly nasty slaughter methods are one thing, but humans have been slaughtering animals for centuries and in many instances have learned efficient and minimally destructive ways to do it. But rather than take the sensible course of investigating the matter, and coming to something that can at least be justified as a legitimate compromise, the animal rights activists would have you believe that the only right answer is their answer.
PETA and their ilk live in unrealistic absolutes -- people are good or evil, all meat is bad, all fur is bad, all foie gras is bad. Perish the idea of actually engaging in any scientific or techonological inquiry, let's just step up on our high horse and tell the rest of the world that they are evil bastards if they don't agree with us. The abortion comparison is not unwarranted, because the anti-abortion crowd uses many of the same tactics to justify their extremist positions as well.
And like it or not -- nature operates using a wheel of life that includes death. To pretend this doesn't exist or try to usurp it in the name of some higher ethical calling is the ultimate human arrogance, because now you are anthropomorphizing nature itself. It is natural for animals to kill other animals in order to eat. That's why I have no problem eating meat, even foie gras. You want to make another choice? Fine. Just don't try to force your morals down my throat. I am a human, not a duck.
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Can't Legislate Compassion
...so, EDUCATE.
My baby had chances to see cows and horses. We would stop by the road and I'd let her pat their noses or feel their coats. Sometimes I felt like a spectator at something sacred. A calm and friendly animal would stand at the fence and regard my baby for some time, listen to her excited preverbal chatter. It seemed as though they, and she, enjoyed their awareness of each other. Perhaps as an infant she also FELT them, like a forcefield. And likely they always have this openness.
It was amazing to watch their mutual curiosity. She responded with intense delight and recognition, pinwheeling her arms and legs and crowing. When we started from the car she'd pummel me with her feet until we got to the fence. Then she'd have long moments of complete stillness, while she gazed at the animal. Excitement would break through periodically and she'd flail her arms at them, but they rarely shied.
Long story shorter, I believe that many people are unmoved by animal suffering because to feel enough compassion for an animal to become vegetarian, you do have to face the reality of their presence, their intelligence, their openness, their ability to bond, to greet, to form relationships, to suffer. It requires a kind of security coupled with vulnerability to the wholeness of life, to do this.
We could teach children to be grateful for the presence of animals. To greet their existence with a sense of wonder. Or perhaps our infants don't need to be taught reverence. Perhaps we do. Or, we can just let them go extinct and boil the planet. It is a choice.
When she was three, my chatterbox asked me in the car one day, what is your purse made of? I answered as gently and simply as I could. You mean, cows? she said. It hurt to nod "yes". She cried all the way home and never ate meat again.
She's now 26. She never lectures anyone. But she knows.
It really doesn't hurt anyone to eat vegetable forms of protein, does it. We do so many more difficult things in our pursuit of health and good looks (imagine the gym). We're not being deprived of anything we need badly when we give up flesh. I think most of us are just so cut off from the natural world that our senses are blunted such that only something as concentrated and intense as the flavor of a tortured, cooked and slaughtered animal can sate our cravings.
It wouldn't hurt to ask at a deeper level, what are we really craving? Is it to be more alive? If so, is it really unimaginable to inquire how we might do that without asking an intelligent and defenseless animal such as a cow or pig or goose to pay the cost of our journey?
Goose Guantanamo. Bovine Bataan. Once you know, you really do know. It's hard to stuff innate compassion forever.
I don't think absolutism of any stripe is much help. But denial isn't either.