foie gras: the liver of a duck or a goose that has been specially fattened by gavage (forcefeeding).
Chicago’s city council recently choked its own foie gras ban it had imposed back in April 2006. More on that shortly, but first, an appropriately gruesome video for your consideration:
(edit: Apparently the video originally posted was removed from YouTube, so I’ve replaced it with two more.)
Mayor Richard Daley had called the ban the “silliest ordinance” the city council ever passed and said it made Chicago “the laughingstock of the nation.”
I agree it was a silly ordinance, attempting to single out the sale of a product in a small area detached from the actual production of it, which is the real issue. It was met largely with disdain from Chicago restaurants or ignored, and some sold it nonetheless or “gave it away,” facing no punishment greater than a warning.
“I thought it was us sticking our nose in something we probably shouldn’t have even been in,” Alderman Dick Mell told the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, adding that veal calves and chickens also suffer in confinement.
“There’s some cruelty out there, folks.”
Dick has a point. Why single out one product while the rest of the meat industry plods on with equally debatable ethics?
I think French foie gras distributor Ariane Daguin summed the issue up quite nicely with a quote in this interesting article by Marshall Sella, Does a Duck Have a Soul?:
“Animals have no soul. God made ducks to have that liver—and He made it incredibly delicious! Why would it exist if not for us to enjoy it?”
