More on Animal Rights

This is from the comments, but I thought it warranted highlighting in a separate post.

Thankfully, Philly Chefs for Choice are striking back against the crazed bunch of zealots who would love nothing more than to take away more and more of our choices. In an event called “Philly Foie For Five,” about 20 Philly restaurants will offer foie gras dishes for just $5. The event goes from October 1st to October 7th. (More info at www.artisanfarmers.org )

The event is designed to expose more people to foie gras. If no one speaks against the minority activists, we will lose the right to eat foie gras. And the slope is slippery. Veal may go next. Then chicken. These activists aren’t going to stop until they have us all eating legumes and liking it. The final strike, if it were up to these activists, truly would be an end to meat-eating.

There are only three foie gras farms in the United States. We aren’t talking about “agri-business” here. We’re talking about small farms producing a small amount of product. But this is why foie gras has become an easy target for the minority zealots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, and many states. In many situations, property owners have been targeted with vandalism and threats have been made against the lives of their families. Protesting is one thing, terrorism is quite another.

Ultimately, business owners are punished by these people for running their businesses legally, in the way they see fit. They lose customers to the screaming hordes (who wants to walk through a screaming band of zealots for lunch?) and lose more when they are forced to give in and take foie gras off the menu. Business owners lose thousands of dollars just fighting these people off. Commerce suffers in cities where these activists attack.

Those who talk about the cruelty of the foie gras process are sadly misinformed. They are putting humans in the place of the animals. By this logic, we should be horrified that the poor things stand around in the winter without shoes and socks.

That is the basic misconception exploited by animal rights organizations, that ducks are like people. Yes, a tube in the throat is not comfortable for humans. Neither is swallowing whole, spiny wriggling fish, which many species of ducks delight in.

In the same way, an enlarged liver in water fowl is a normal process, not a disease process. In fact, most birds have the same mechanism. Have you ever seen fat hummingbirds? Yet they sure take on a lot of sugar water before they migrate. The extra energy is stored in an enlarged liver.

For the activists and others not well-informed on the issue, foie gras production has been carefully examined by animal welfare advocates who have determined it to be humane. Unfortunately, these activists (or terrorists, if you will) are uneducated and ignorant of the truth. They may even know the facts but chose to ignore them out of zealotry for their cause.

Those who wish to know more about foie gras production, there are two articles at the bottom of the first page of www.artisanfarmers.org that discuss the animal welfare aspects of it. For some additional perspective, see: http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/sep05/050901q.asp

Actually, even for people it’s not all that uncomfortable to have a tube down your throat.  Endoscopes are typically done while the patient is awake, sometimes with drugs to suppress the gag reflex.  Birds don’t have gag reflexes, and many young are fed through regurgitation by the parent its young’s mouth.