Foie Gras

[Lieva]

ok read wiki
the thing is nasty
should be banned :/

[OohhoO]

There are actually a very few producers who don't forcefeed their geese, but you can usually only buy their products locally. They're also horrendously expensive ofc, as their livers only end up being 1/3 - 1/2 as big as when forcefed, and forcefeeding is much cheaper than otherwise persuading them to eat more than they normally would. It's also much harder to regulate the "quality" of the fois gras than when forcefeeding.

Yes it's a horrible practice, but when you've seen videos of farmers holding up piglets by their hind legs & roughly castrating them one after the other with not very sharp implements & without anasthaetic because "animals don't have feelings" (a common & pretty much universally approved practice apparently) then you really begin to wonder about humanity.

[Kallima]

Never ate it. I don't think there is any of that stuff around that doesn't involve some suffering.

Hard to avoid everything that might involve cruelty unfortunately. You can only do a few things. I try and just get free range eggs. You ever wonder how the eggs do the free ranging? <pictures egg with little legs running round farm yard>

[<ankh>]

Never ate it. I don't think there is any of that stuff around that doesn't involve some suffering.

Hard to avoid everything that might involve cruelty unfortunately. You can only do a few things. I try and just get free range eggs. You ever wonder how the eggs do the free ranging? <pictures egg with little legs running round farm yard>

Its hard to avoid sometimes..yes...but Foie Gras is just plain sick. There is no need what so ever to treat the animals the way they do just to get the fatty liver.

/Ankh

[OohhoO]

I saw a film recently made by a well-known naturalist about a farm in Italy which produces goose-liver with free-range geese & without force-feeding.

OFC it's sadly just the exception which proves the nasty rule.

[Xest]

We have a decent local farm near us that focusses on providing free range food, we get pretty much all our meat there as frankly it's just so much nicer than the crap they sell in supermarkets. They're more than willing to let you see round the farm too so my recommendation is support your local farms and see if you can find any selling animal produce that is aquired rather more humanely if not only because a lot of it really often does taste better also.

It's somewhat strange really as no one looks at supermarkets as being particularly evil yet supermarkets are one of the biggest contributors to global warming (mores so than many factories) as well as being the supplier of various goods aquired through questionable means be it child/third world labour or cruel treatment of animals.

When I saw the news about the fortunes supermarkets are amassing and how it's killing local suppliers and such I always had the attitude that it's tough for these suppliers, frankly they're in business and if their competitors do better than them then it's not their competitors fault, they just didn't do as good a job of running their business and that's what it's all about. Now however I'm beginning to realise that there is a real cost to these giant supermarkets, whilst they make some leeway in pleasing those concious about world issues by providing the option of some fair trade goods it is just a patch work fix for whatever the most glaring or complained about issues are, for every product they make enviromentally friendly or whatver there is a thousand more not in the public eye which they continue to rack up their profits from.