Bob del Grosso
The following is abstracted and revised from an earlier post that I decided took up too much space and potential reading time. I’ve moved the longer version here if anyone cares to read it. BdG
I think the fumarole of concern over the way that animals are raised , while by
no means irrelevant, is a bit of a dog and pony show designed make
people feel better about something they choose not to think about. I think that no matter how much farm animals are pampered many still suffer once they reach the killing floor -and shouldn’t that be what we should be concerned about? Why don’t we hear anything about that part of the food cycle coming from Mr. Celebrity Chef and the other proponents of humane treatment of animals raised for meat?
Please don’t misread me, I’m not suggesting that we should not all
be advocates for the humane treatment of the animals whose flesh we
cook and eat. Nothing could be further from the truth. But why is it that some of the most visible practitioners of the culinary arts appear to relish the opportunity to condemn feedlots and "force feeding" but remain mute on the subject what happens at the portal to the abattoir?
Categories: Uncategorized | 
Tags: | 
17 Comments »
As Bourdain himself pointed out, it wasn’t until he went to the pig-killing in Portugal at his boss’s family’s farm that he really had to THINK about where the food he ordered every day came from, and how it came to him, all neatly plastic-wrapped and portioned off. Not many chefs go meet their ingredients before they’re killed, so I think there’s a disconnect for a lot of them who have to spend a lot of time doing inventory and ordering food from their purveyors, even though they are, theoretically, “ordering the deaths” of a lot more beasties than the average supermarket shopper. I’m not faulting the chefs for that, mind you – I’m just saying that if more got out into the field and SAW the process by which an animal is turned into food then they’d understand that there is very little truly humane killing – or treatment – going on. (Although the pig-killing, on a family farm, seemed to me a lot swifter, painless and more humane than at one of the big CAFOs or abbatoir.)
I wish the world would be one giant PolyFace Farm. I wish all of it would be a lot more humane, natural and in balance, a la Joel Salatin. But Puck and Trotter and all the other anti-foie agent provocateurs need to grasp that ANY protein they cook has a rough death behind it and stop being so selectively hypocritical.
excellent, claudia!! so, i take it that you will be saying NO to foie gras from now on?
I think it’s a lot easier to attack an issue that is limited to a certain section of the industry (the issue of foie gras and force-feeding), than taking on the much larger, much more complicated issue of the state of our slaughterhouses. In my eyes, how the average cow/chicken/pig/whathaveyou ends up at our local supermarket is a much more prevalent issue that impacts more animals than does the foie gras issue, but for someone looking for a crusade, it’s probably simpler to avoid that particular behemoth.
No, I’m not giving up foie, “Faust”. Muscovy ducks are inherently big gobblers in the wild, and they’ve been bred over generations to be big eaters. At every poultry farm I’ve been to, a lot of the ducks actually come running when they see the farmer and feeder used to feed them come out. Ducks and geese do not make the same associations as we do with having something inserted down our throats and, physically, they are much better designed to have a feeding tube/funnel fed down them. (There was an excellent blog on the matter on megnuts.com, in which Rulhman and Bourdain, I believe both participated, and one of the bloggers had a lot of detailed information about the breeding and feeding of these birds.)
The kind of “cruelty” that the anti-foie faction is screaming about is non-existent, in comparison to, say, veal calves spending their lives in crates (Britain stopped that practice 16 years ago, without detriment to the tenderness of the veal – we haven’t), or battery hens caged in their own shit, sometimes with their beaks removed (yes, you heard me) to prevent pecking themselves to bits out of the stress of confinement, or, yes, the feedlots and CAFOs. Remember the Smithfield pigs?
So, yes, I drink organic milk from pastured cows (not Horizon Organics), eat cage-free, cruelty free eggs, gave up veal (a real hardship for an Italian), and have been horrified enough to foreswear meat from the supermarket – between the Smithfield story and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I just couldn’t face the Stop n’ Shop anymore.
So, to me, based on everything I’ve seen, the ducks and geese have a FABULOUS quality of life, and Puck and Trotter really need to look into their souls and ask themselves where their last haunch of beef came from, not assailing an easy target like foie, which is basically a luxury item. That beautiful pork loin they have on the menu probably came from a long-suffering pig in one of those horrible “gestation” cages, in an airless, fetid CAFO not unlike Smithfield’s. Basically, I feel they need to examine the provenance of ALL of their ingredients, and insist on cruelty-free ingredients from their purveyors – as we should be, too.
Claudia, I commend you on your food choices, and in practice I am sure that you eat more “humanely” than I do (I simply don’t have the time or money to cook for myself all the time).
I just want to point out that foie gras in the US is generally produced by the Mulard duck, which is a sterile hybrid between a Muscovy and a Pekin (the typical “domestic duck” which who knows how many centuries ago was bred from Mallards by the Chinese). The Muscovy is a non-migratory species, and for what it’s worth some wild populations of Mallards are migratory while others are not. Thus the idea that what occurs in American foie gras production is merely a naturally occurring physiologic adaptation of a migratory bird is a myth (you don’t make this claim in your post, but it is a commonly cited argument among the pro-foie contingent). In truth, the ducks used for foie gras couldn’t exist in the wild, and less than half of their genetic makeup would predispose them towards migratory adaptation.
Another logical flaw in the argument that migratory birds gorge themselves anyways is that if this were “good enough” we could just offer them big piles of food like a permanent all-you-can-eat buffet rather than having to tube feed them. However, migratory birds’ livers expand to only 2x their normal size while the foie ducks have livers up to 10x normal. We are clearly pushing them much farther than any point which could be deemed natural.
Also, Puck’s “publicity stunt” contains 9 points, of which the foie gras ban is only one. He’s also avoiding battery caged hens, pig gestations crates, veal crates, etc. Plus Smithfield (and this is by no means an endorsement of the company) has also decided to phase out gestation crates (over the course of a decade!). I’m not sure which animal rights lobby finally succeeded in breaking through for that one, since none of the usual suspects (PETA, Farm Sanctuary, Humane Society) is claiming credit.
Thanks, Steve, for pointing out all of Puck’s 9 points – it appears he has thought this out more fully than I originally understood.
I know migratory birds’ livers don’t expand near as much as a duck/goose gavage-fed, but it still doesn’t seeem to be causing them any undue discomfort (the feeding OR the fatty liver.) (If every American waddling around with a liver 10x its normal size felt horrific, you can bet we’d all diet our way back down to our appropriate sizes!)
And, yes, Mulard – I was reaching for the name since it’s been almost 10 months since I read the megnuts blog, but my synapses short-circuited to “Muscovy”.
Actually, I think the outrage from readers of the Rolling Stone article and others like us might have contributed to Smithfield’s decision to do away with gestation cages – not just PETA, etc. Smithfield treats its employees almost as badly as it does its animals (no joke), and I’ve been actively e-petitioning it for a while now on labor issues, not just piggie issues. So I think being publicly excoriated by the mainstream press might have really given some impetus to Smithfield cleaning up its act – “over a decade” (!!)
Hey Bob,
Check out this link form the NYT about Burger King announcing it’s switch to cruelty-free pork and eggs…
http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/burger-king-shifts-policy-on-animals/#comment-47015
My excuse: I’m a newbie, and I’m re-posting my first rant that ended up at the very end of the “liver” blog, which I will assume nobody read. It may be un-cool, but here it is again:
PUCK WOLFGANG!!!
…anyone who has actually BEEN TO FRANCE and SEEN ducks being prepped to become foie donors would know that the process is simply one of mimicking the duck’s own natural pre-migratory eating behavior.
Foie was originally discovered when hunters found that wild geese and ducks they caught just before the birds annual migration had naturally occuring…foie!
Some guy here on Northern CA. (probably Sonoma) is working on…get this (tee-hee-hee %^)
“consensual foie gras”.
Just the image that concept brings to mind – not to mention the plethora of dirty jokes and puns -Well, it makes me proud to say I’m from Berkeley, in the heart of the Land of Fruits and Nuts…
I just graduated from culinary school last week (Today I am a (unemployed) Pastry Chef!)and my greatest regret (besides my massive debt and my school year weight gain)is that I will no longer be able to bribe the nice man at the school’s supply loading dock for torchons of foie in exchange for chocolate truffles containing liquor.
in fact, there is a woman advocating for humane slaughter: temple grandin. she is better-known for being a really high-functioning autistic woman, profiled at length by dr. oliver sachs in his book on autism, “an anthropologist from mars”. however, she is also a phd who specializes in the handling of cattle, and has designed a humane “slaughter chute” (my term, not hers–can’t remember what she calls it). basically her opinion is that the most humane thing to do is to surprise the animal, and her chute is designed specifically to block its view of the slaughterhouse until the last possible second. anyway, i think anyone interested in the humane treatment of animals ought to read her work. her autism actually gives her a very interesting perspective, and even empathy for the animals she works with. i’ve never read her writing–only her opinions as conveyed in profiles–so i don’t know how technical/accessible to the lay reader her writing is, but i would recommend at least checking out sach’s profile, which will give you a good overview of her ideas.
also, i believe both kosher and halal slaughterhouses are, by religious injunction, required to be humane. i don’t know what kind of oversight there is or how variously “humane” is interpreted, but, it’s worth a thought.
Hey liz, thanks for the note on Temple Grandin. I saw her speak at my school a couple years ago — quite an experience.
Kosher and halal slaughter are actually not very humane. The cows must be conscious when they are killed, and they are killed with a single cut across their neck with a long knife. This severs their internal and external carotid arteries and jugular veins, which in most animals would cause very rapid loss of blood to the brain. Cows, however, have an extra blood supply to the brain which is not cut by this technique, so they remain conscious much longer. The captive bolt technique is *much* faster when done correctly (essentially like a gunshot to the head).
thanks for your comments, steve.
and thanks for bringing up ms.grandin, liz. online here > http://www.grandin.com/
So surprising an animal into taking a ride on the “slaughter chute” is more humane how? Doesn’t the animal still die in the end? It seems like quite the farce to sit here and academically dissect (no pun intended…) how we kill animals for food. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying to ban the slaughter of animals. I’m a quite content omnivore. I like my filet rare, and I have no problem with a bit of foie gras here and there when I can afford such a luxury on a grad school budget, but the whole argument about “humane slaughter” rings hollow to me. In the end, the animal dies, and it dies in a way that would not happen in the wild. All we’re doing here is using rationalization and intellectualization to allow our minds to rest easy at night. A friend (not a foodie by any stretch of the imagination) once said to me “Whether you order the duck or not, it doesn’t change the fact there are dead ducks hanging in the kitchen.” He was drunk at the time, but it made so much sense then, and still does today. That’s what it comes down to. No matter how you get your meat–regardless of what it is–an animal died, and not because it was “its time” or any other “circle of life” feel-good euphemism. Unless we’re willing to do the deed ourselves, we will continually be distanced from the slaughter, able to sit here and sort out the finer points of what it means to kill an animal–without ever actually having to kill an animal.
Yes, I think that it’s more humane when an animal doesn’t know what’s coming. There is much less fear, anxiety, and stress. I kill animals all the time, albeit for medical reasons rather than culinary ones. A basic principle behind animal welfare is not whether we kill them, but whether we cause them to suffer. Death and suffering are different — one has to happen, the other does not.
I think it is precisely because people are far removed from the raising and slaughtering of farm animals that they think the difference between a humanely raised and slaughtered animal and one which was industrially farmed and poorly slaughtered is “merely academic”.
To “Foodie”, I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that the slaughter chute is inhumane?
If it is, perhaps we can discuss a more humane way to kill the animal.
Or are you saying that it does not matter how an animal is raised?
The latter argument is one I have heard many times; I’m not sure how one can compare an animal living comfortably until the moment it is killed, versus a living creature enduring torturous, filthy, concentration-camp type conditions for years on end and then being killed.
As for the comment by your drunken friend, I would argue that every time a vegetarian customer refrains from handing money to a meat vendor, they are causing a financial loss to the meat industry, and handing out profits to the vegetarian industry.
Claudia, you do know that debeaking isn’t removing the whole beak of the chicken, right? It’s just clipping off the end–done in a second, it doesn’t bleed, and the beak is still there.
Humane slaughter sounds like an oxymoron to me if there ever was one. How is a bolt to the head of a cow “humane”? Does an electric shock to the skull sound “humane”? When we execute criminals with lethal injection is it “humane”? “Humane” treatment is a euphemism we use so that we can remove ourselves from the mental anguish of taking a life.
The sanitized world of the mega market safely wraps our meat products in Styrofoam and cellophane and we buy that mean with happy abandon without cause for concern or need for wonder about where said meat comes from. Would we buy that meat if it was cut fresh from the carcass? Government inspection notwithstanding, the thought of dead flesh hanging in the meat locker is “gross” and “disgusting”. Our overly sensitive, pampered, and coddled sentimentalities are offended when we consider the cute little baby cow grazing in the pasture soon to become veal.
Consider this: ducks and geese have been fattened for foie gras for millenia, mankind has shot and/or put the knife to many animals over the run of history, we have been frying/braising/sauteing/grilling/stuffing meat since fire was discovered. And yet, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west.
While mankind continues to eat meat, slaughter will continue. The alternative is to chuck a living, breathing moo-cow onto the coals.
I’d like to propose a new group: PETV, people for the ethical treatment of vegetables. I just can’t stomach the idea of people ripping a beautiful carrot from its hidey-hole in the earth. All those bags of veggies in the market make me cry for those who can no longer shed their tears…
PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals