I believe in free enterprise capitalism as much as the next guy, but let’s go about it ethically, shall we?

Thanks for this post.

The “come willingly to be fed” line is not entirely correct. Geese very often will. Ducks, not so much. And of course the bulk of the production is duck. There are a few good studies that talk about this, and I’ve seen it — or rather, not seen it — at Sonoma Foie Gras, where even the person in charge of feeding the ducks says that they don’t. (Or he did to me when I wrote about the issue back in 2004.)

Also, though I’ve only visited one American foie gras producer’s farm, I wouldn’t describe the gavage barn as airy. (Other parts of the lifespan: yes.) My photographer (not Melissa at the time) could barely handle it long enough to snap some pics for the article, the stench was so bad (see Sanders’ “From Here You Can’t See Paris” for a description more eloquent than I can manage). The air and temperature are closely controlled to avoid stressing the ducks, but it’s closed in and smelly. And that’s a good producer: There are plenty of commercial French/Hungarian producers who basically have factory farms for foie gras (inasmuch as one can without stressing the ducks, though of course the Mulard is favored nowadays precisely because it handles stress better, a fact that always gives me some pause).

Finally, I don’t know that the “I’d rather be a foie gras goose than a Foster’s Farms chicken” (attributed to Paula Wolfert, I think) sentiment works in our favor. Just because there are worse things out there does not make this thing good. It just makes it less bad.

On the other hand, you’re right: If you’re going to be a store owner talking the talk about animal welfare, don’t do it with a luxe product that has easy sympathy; make the hard choice and change the ingredients your customers actually buy.

The guy in Spain that Sean mentions is definitely interesting. I wrote Barber about the talk, and he says he hasn’t had a chance to cook with it. The problem with the guy in Spain is you can get a goose to stuff itself, but you won’t get what the public thinks of as foie gras. That may be a problem with our perception, which was Barber’s point back to me, which I agree with.

Jimmy: Because I don’t think he’s “doing the right thing” but rather exploiting the situation to get some free publicity. Or, if you want to give the benefit of the doubt, he’s being unwisely encouraged by anti-foie organizations (who were the ones who put out the press releases that brought this issue to the media). I suspect, though, that you and I going to have to agree to disagree. All of the videos of foie gras operations I’ve seen (even those filmed by anti-foie activists) look downright bucolic compared with even the most humane factory farm. The birds are usually given free range, nearly always kept in large, airy barns with lots of room to move around and behave like their natural selves. And they come willingly to be fed. Contrast this with the life of a battery chicken, or a crated sow, and I think you’ll see that the ire toward foie gras is sorely misdirected.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_parable.html

It’s inspiring. And he makes the same point — if more people were aware of the cruelty that goes into factory farming, foie gras would be an afterthought at best.