Picture Credit: SEAN POULTER FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Foe Gras
Could Foie Gras Ever Be Ethical
“Foie Gras” in French cuisine is a common and famous delicacy. Foie gras is a French term meaning fatty liver. Its flavour is described as rich, delicate as well as buttery, unlike that of a common goose or duck liver. It is definitely a delight to the senses for many of the rich when it comes to eating this luxurious meal, however the process of producing these foods (Foie Gras) is very unethical to say the least and goes against various animal rights and welfare laws.
The production of whereby foie gras is made of is very controversial as the liver of a goose or duck is forcefully fattened. This controversial process involves excessively forcefully feeding those poor birds with huge amounts of food, much more than what they would eat in the wild and also a lot more than what they would eat if they were domesticated. Cruel factory farm worker’s goal is to ensure the group of ducks and gooses have had their livers fattened, enlarging the poor bird’s liver to 10-15 times its usual size.
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Factory farm workers forcefully push as well as squeeze metal feeding tubes down the fragile throats of gooses or ducks at least twice a day. In those metal tubes which are pumping pounds upon pounds of fats as well as grains into the stomach, usually over 4 pounds are pumped in daily, sometimes even cruelly more. This torturous, harsh and savage process is known as “Gavage-based foie gras production”. As mentioned early, this process of force-feeding causes the bird’s liver to expand and enlarge up to 10-15 times their original size. This causes the birds to have a very hard time standing, some birds might even break their legs as it cannot support their already increased body weight. No one at the factory farms care of course as the workers and owners at those farms are only interested in the profit margins and money made. These poor birds go through overwhelming amount of not only physical but heavy psychological pain and stress which causes them to bite themselves, tear out feathers and even attack other birds out of psychological and physical stress.
Another reason that adds to the already cruel enough process of gavage foie gras production is that these poor ducks and gooses are kept in very small, confined cages or super crowded sheds with very little to absolutely no sunlight at all and also where is it very hard for these poor captive birds to move left or right. There is various modern factory farms nowadays who keep gooses and ducks in metal cages as small as the size of these poor bird’s bodies. A wide array of common health problems that these poor birds in cruel captivity face are fractures of the sternum (breastbone), lesions, heat stress, severe diarrhea, impaired liver function, fungal infections, heavy damages to the oesophagus as well as extremely severe psychological stresses.
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Throughout many nations, including Israel, Germany, Norway as well as the United Kingdom are against animal force feeding. The importation of foie gras has been prohibited in India, this means it cannot be sold anywhere in the country. Despite various animal welfare organizations as well as animal rights groups going against the cruelty of gavage foie gras production, a number of factory farms hide their gavage activities and it is not until further deep inspection from animal welfare enforcements agents or local law enforcement personnel to uncover and strop such cruel activity. We should all take a stand against foie gras productions luxurious food can be compromised, in return we can make sure our earthly and peaceful ducks and gooses don’t suffer a life in agonising pain and death just in the name of profit and money. It is not ethical at all.
#FactoryFarming #AnimalCruelty #CageTheCruelty #AnimalSaviourJC
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Written by: Joshua. C 10th of july 2020
References:
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https://www.nycfoiegras.com/blog/hudson-valley-foie-gras-factory-farm-investigations
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https://aldf.org/issue/foie-gras/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras
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https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/ducks-geese/foie-gras/