The following article from Alberta's Western Standard cries out for letters to the editor. A good source of information is http://www.nofoiegras.org/
The Western Standard takes letters at http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=magazine.editorletter
Western Standard (Alberta)
June 19, 2006 Monday
NEWS; Pg. 42
No harm, no fowl: Force-feeding geese to make foie gras sure sounds cruel. So why do the birds enjoy it?
John Luik, Western Standard
Ever since Chicago celebrity chef Charlie Trotter announced that he would stop serving pate de foie gras in his eponymous Lincoln Park restaurant because it was produced by inhumane methods, the fight over the centuries-old French delicacy has assumed a profile--and an urgency--well out of proportion to the number of people on this side of the Atlantic who have even tasted it.
In Trotter's town, they've all stopped selling foie gras, thanks to city council passing a law in April that bans all restaurant sales of the fatty liver dish. In September, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that will make it illegal to sell or produce foie gras in his state by 2012. In New York, a group of protestors gather weekly outside New York City's famed Union Square Cafe (where the pate is outstanding), demanding the state follow California's lead. And if Ottawa City Councillor Alex Cullen has his way, that city will be the first in Canada to create a foie gras-free zone.
Why? Animal rights activists claim foie gras production methods are cruel. And they're not the first. As far back as the 11th century, the French rabbi and celebrated Jewish scholar Rashi warned that the practice was too callous to be kosher. The New York demonstrators hand out pamphlets claiming foie gras is the "disease tissue of a tortured, sick animal" and that the animals "literally explode" from the food crammed down their throats during the process. Are they right? Don't be so sure.
There's no question that the way foie gras is made can be off-putting. Geese (or ducks) are fed large amounts of corn twice a day for two weeks, through metal tubes inserted down their gullets. The result is an extremely large, fatty and tasty liver. But the issue is shot through with class conflicts, since foie gras is usually something seen, like caviar, as an acquired taste of the upper class (especially at about $7 an ounce). So, the picture painted by opponents of foie gras--that poultry suffer for the delight of the elite--is both compelling and emotional. All the more reason to look to science as a way of disentangling the factual from the sentimental aspects of the debate.
While the published scientific literature on foie gras production is limited, it still provides a basis, along with the observational evidence from veterinarians, for reaching a reasonable conclusion about claims that animals fattened for foie gras production experience high levels of pain and suffering. That, and the fact that humans discovered the tastiness of fatty livers in the first place because ducks and geese routinely gorge on large quantities of food before migration, anyway.
In 1996, Jean-Michel Faure, a scientist with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and an authority on animal stress, published a study of birds in foie gras production methods.
He monitored the fowl from 1995 to 1998, using a number of empirical measures, including measuring corticosterone levels to determine adrenal activity and stress levels, to establish whether the animals were stressed and in pain during the feeding process. None of the measures indicated there should be concern for the animals' welfare. As summed up in a 1998 report by the European Union's Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare, Faure's results provided "no evidence that intensive force feeding is stressful to the . . . duck." Similarly, in a debate last year in the House of Delegates of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Dr. Walter McCarthy, a New Jersey veterinarian, confirmed that since birds used in foie gras production had specially lined esophaguses (with cornified epithelium), they were both tough enough and elastic enough to accommodate the large feedings. That backs up a 1972 study, published in the British Journal of Poultry Science by the
University of Basel's Rabbi Dr. I. M. Levinger, one of the world's foremost experts on animal welfare and kosher slaughter. Levinger analyzed the effects of force-feeding on the esophaguses of geese, and found nothing in the tissue consistent with pain and distress.
In fact, Michael Ginor, owner of Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York, gave evidence at the AVMA discussion, that when he walks among his flock, the birds readily approach him for more food. More importantly, if the animals were stressed or in pain, the food would not be digested properly anyway, defeating the entire purpose. One AVMA veterinarian, Dr. Thomas Munschauer, visited foie gras farms and reported, "It didn't seem like the birds were distressed." A New Jersey vet, Dr. Robert Gordon, testified: "After being on the [farm's] premises, my position changed dramatically. I did not see animals I would consider distressed and I didn't see pain and suffering." As for claims by animal rights groups that the livers of these birds "explode," the economics of foie gras production are such that ruptured livers would make the product unsaleable--so, as the EU report confirms, the birds are slaughtered before that happens. Until then, they're apparently well cared for: mortality rat
es of birds on foie gras farms are actually lower than on farms raising chickens and turkeys. The only folks who love these birds more are the people who will dine on their succulent livers--at least as long as the law permits it.
(END OF WESTERN STANDARD ARTICLE)
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Date: Tue Jun 20 14:54:07 2006
