Is there a humane way to shove food down an innocent animal's throat? 10 to 15 seconds is immaterial. As Einstein pointed out, 10 to 15 seconds will seem like an eternity if the situation is sufficiently torturous.

Eat the foie gras if you must, but don't pretend it's anything but cruelty. "Humane foie gras" sounds like "humane veal." Can't be done.

What would be much, much more cruel would be depriving me of pate. What I read of the process above is less cruel than having to spend 15 seconds listening to a vegan talk about his eating habit.

But, Patrick, if you don't wish support what you see as cruelty, I will support you in that. Just don't make me live your life.

We have active imaginations, which also let us rationalize nearly anything. If Americans had to prepare their meals from scratch rather than simply walk up and ask for something, I bet they'd be fitter.

Similarly, if Americans were mostly farmers, the animal rights movement would be much weaker, because farmers have a very practical view of the relationship between humans and our food.

BlogDog is right on. I understand the vegetarians in the world, as well as the bio fans. They can live their lives; I'll live mine.

Also, not all that is "bio" or "animal friendly" really is. Two examples:

A friend tells me the story of a "free range" chicken ranch she saw. There was a very small door to the outside, so the chickens could get out. But things were arranged so that they generally never did. The existence of the door made them officially "free range".

Or "bio" pest-resistant apple varieties: the reason some varieties don't need pesticides is because the apples themselves are naturally poisonous. The fact that the pesticides are "natural" doesn't make them healthy - worse, they don't wash off. Eat one of these babies, and you ingest far more pesticide that a non-bio variety that needs sprayed.

While it is true Patrick, distress is something that only humans try to control.

A lower animal, such as a duck, a dog, a cat, etc, if it is in distress, will react violently.

The bird will flap its feathers, void its bowels, or in some way struggle.

It seems perfectly clear from the description that the animal was more disturbed by being picked up, than by the feeding process.

Now you may not care for that particular method of feeding, however you are equally hard pressed to point to some indication of cruelty in it aside from your own squeemishness. Don't eat the product if you don't care to, I'll happily eat your share myself. :) Its satisfying to be a carnivore.

------------------

True radwaste, but its a consequence of modern life that meals no longer take much effort. You're welcome to adopt the "from scratch" method for yourself. Give it a shot, and let us know the results, I'd be curious to hear them.

Veganism is a sign of our present decadence.

Only in a modern society, complete with modern medical care, broadly grown diversity of crops, easy availability of nutrient supplements in pill, powder, or liquid additive format, can someone reject the best or in some cases virtually only sources of vital nutrients, and call themselves "moral" for it.

Only in that same modern society, where almost all work performed by said vegans is basically sedentary, thus minimizing the need for physical stamina and the requisite calorie intake, can those vegans even survive.

Veganism is ultimate expression of Shakespeare's famous line:

"Must conscience make cowards of us all?!"

It is a complete abdication of the natural in favor of an unsustainable ideal of what the natural should be.

And quite frankly...vegans are hilariously easy to tweak. Call me insensitive (its true) but watching easily offended overly sensitive people burst into flames is funny as hell.

Anybody care to sing a Denis Leary song about now?

I wish the anthropomorphism of animal
experience would cease.

Patrick- have you ever seriously watched mother birds feed their young. Generally shoving their beaks down the chicks throat while regurgitating
the meal, a process that often takes over 10 seconds. For all you know the process may only make these creatures nostalgic for their infancy.

Pate, fois gras, veal...you guys are making me hungry. I know, I know, hateful, insensitive, indicative of my own mental illness and general bad personness...

Just in the interest of stirring up a little more trouble, here's a link to an article by an actual farmer called "The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals":

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals

Don't read it if you're feeling sensitive.

This got printed in the Village Voice?
Very brave of them.

Fois Gras disgusts me. The way it's made, and it itself. Much like veal. While I'm fine with people eating things that disgust me, I have no respect for those who try to argue it isn't cruel. Much like with abortion-admit the reality of what you're doing if you're going to do it, don't cower behind platitudes.

The ducks may have known struggling was futile. They may not have minded the tube-force-feeding. But I can guarantee you they feel like crap. Ask anyone with fatty liver disease.

Just to set the record straight, I am not a vegetarian. I just prefer not to eat animals that are treated cruelly throughout their lives. Hamburgers are okay. At least the steer was allowed to move while it was alive. Veal is made by raising a calf in conditions that don't even allow the animal to stand up, is deprived of its own mother, and is fed a nasty concoction of hormones and chemicals to tenderize the meat. I understand the slaughter techniques could be improved upon, but on my sister's late husband's farm, the animals are treated pretty well, up until the day they are slaughtered. They have shelter and are free to graze outside. But veal is unnecessary barbarism.

Regarding the argument that the geese are pretty accustomed to gavage, so what? I would never do this, but I could take a young child, slap it across the face at the same time every day, and in a few months, he'll come to expect it, accept it, maybe not even mind it so much. He'll eventually stop crying over it, and just take it. Doesn't change the fact that it's cruel.

Oh, my God! Momof4 and I agree on something else.

(clutching chest, Redd Foxx impression) Ooohhhh...this is it! This is the big one! 'Lizabeth! I'm coming to join you, honey!

Some people allege the branding of cattle to be cruel and inhumane.

But those same people never seem to notice that cattle manage to survive a winter outside while being naked the entire time.

here's a thought experiment for you. In a war, would it be OK for us to dump a chemical on the oppopsition that would cause their skin to disolve, and their organs to burst open?

Wars are very cruel, and we have various rules and regs to try and make them less so, because those wars are against humans just like us.

When you wipe your countertop with lysol, you kill 99.9% of the "germs" you come into contact with... by ripping their skin off. You kill MILLIONS of them.

Are you being cruel? The idea is a human explanation. In the animal kingdom, they probably have a different name for it depending on if they are sentient. As far as we know they are not. There are insects that kill in order to mate, everything is eating something else, and many do not make it to the end of their natural lifespan because they are somebody else's dinner.

Is that cruel? If we see a fluffy bunny struggling, we think it's suffering, and we equate that to human suffering. But you can't see the germs on your countertop and don't notice that they would shrink from the lysol. Do they suffer? Do you care?

Isn't it kinda hypocritical to care about fluffy bunnies and not rattlesnakes? What about the microbes that you breathe in, that are immediately set upon and destroyed by your body. What'd they ever do to you?

The problem people are having is that in these ducks and in veal, and tons of other animals, the timeframe is short enough that there is no disputing that we are fattening them up to eat them. While we feel that a duck or steer running around free on the farm is engaging in some kind of life before they die, that is an arrogant human assumption. Isn't it kinda sneaky to domesticate an animal, and trick it by feeding it before you kill it? Ever seen a feedlot? It ain't pretty. Chicken house? Same kind of thing. They are nothing other than factories that make meat. Talapia farm? same thing.

This is just human efficiency applied to hunting food. Wolves don't farm their animals. They hunt them, and they remove the sicker ones first. But if the herds of animals they follow, or the other animals they eat have a bad year, then? The wolves starve. To death, if nothing changes. Is it cruel for the wolf to pick off the weak? The ones born sick?

Human beings are smart and compassionate, and that is why we apply some stnadards to how we effect our world, but we are VERY selective, and unprincipled , almost immoral about it. I think hamburgers are OK too Patrick, but then I've actually herded cattle, and know a bit about them. The hemburger you are likely eating came from a feedlot cow that moved around a pen with a large number of other cows, fattened up by feed it's whole life, and never really seeing a pasture. If it was a male, it was castrated so it never had sex, and most females it depends on if they were ever good enough to breed, weather they were in the pen a lot or not. Their life was over with a bolt to the head.

Was that a better life than veal? It was certainly longer. In the end it was reaised fed, and slaughtered for our food. What is the real difference there?

Yet, if there were no cows I would be out hunting anything that could feed me, and thinking not even once about if it was right to kill whatever animal and eat it. Is it less cruel because it was mono a mono? Becuase I had to try? Because I might have prayed to the animal gods to appease them?

We eat, we clean our houses, we kill the ants, and spiders, and so forth. And somehow we also manage to agonize over it as if this isn't the way it's supposed to be. Meanwhile the rest of the non-human world goes on with it's struggle to live long enough to procreate.

If anyone really has these reservations, then go talk to a local farmer, and find one that raises their animals in a way you agree with, and then buy form them, only. In a non factory setting, it's much more likely that the animals wandered around, caused trouble, and were treated with something akin to affection by the person raising them.

But if you buy your hamburger at wal-mart or kroger, don't kid yourself for even a moment that it's somehow different from veal other than in expense. Although a calf raised for 20 weeks as an individual probably gets more attention, than one raised for a year on a feedlot.
EIther way, they were raised to be eaten, and for that purpose only.

"True radwaste, but its a consequence of modern life that meals no longer take much effort. You're welcome to adopt the "from scratch" method for yourself. Give it a shot, and let us know the results, I'd be curious to hear them."

Wow. You've never heard of hunting!

Chow down.

Quite frankly I dont like the taste of veal.

I'm not especially bothered by the thought of killing non-intelligent germs.

Why is it every single time that the discussion of food comes up, everyone's claws suddenly come out? Hellooooo? I'm just talking about my preferences, not dictating anyone else's.

"I consider the veal industry to be cruel."

"SHRIEEEEEK! How dare you?"

Good Lord, if I said I preferred vanilla to chocolate, would you chocolate-lovers blow a gasket? What about people who are allergic to chocolate? Should we execute them?

SwissArmyD, you want to eat veal? Then eat it. Who the hell said you shouldn't? All I'm saying is that I consider the treatment of the calves used to make veal to be excessive cruelty, and I'm not going to support the industry. Dig? No one's telling you what to do, so calm the fuck down already!

I also don't care for the egg industry. The chickens are fed hormones to make them produce more eggs, and are kept in cages about the size of shoeboxes stacked from floor to ceiling so they can't even stand up, and they produce eggs till the day they die. Their beaks are filed off so they can't peck at each other.

I find this to be utterly fascinating in cruelty. Who's the sociopath who came up with this scheme to produce eggs? "Make those cages smaller. Who gives a fuck if they can't stand up? Where the hell do they need to go?...Pecking at each other? No problem. Just shove them face first into a circular sander to get rid of the beaks..."

If that doesn't bother you, go ahead and eat the eggs. Enjoy. Not asking you not to. But I'm not going to support the industry that treats animals that way. Sorry that threatens you so much, but I'm not changing my mind.

Backyard eggs are an easy thing to find in Austin. And boy, is there a difference! I couldn't tell an organic banana from any other banana if my life depended on it, but I can tell a freerange natural-fed egg. Freerange (true freerange) beef, too. I'm not gonna lie though-weeks the money's tight, we eat Walmart factory meat. Such is life. I don't celebrate the process, though. And no one HAS to eat fois gras. Poor people don't get to be choosy.

Patrick, if one talks enough topics, one find common ground with anyone. Cool, isn't it!

"The chickens are fed hormones to make them produce more eggs, and are kept in cages about the size of shoeboxes stacked from floor to ceiling so they can't even stand up, and they produce eggs till the day they die. Their beaks are filed off so they can't peck at each other."

I'll throw the flag on this one. Just where did you learn this?

What's the hormone used?
How does a chicken that can't stand up lay lots of eggs?
How does a chicken lay eggs in poor health?
Who does the filing of beaks, and how often must it be done?
How do they peck at each other if they're in their own shoebox-sized cages?

I'm not denying there's an industry, which sells everything but the cluck. But since I have a co-worker who actually runs a poultry farm here in SC, I thought I'd get the info and check it with him.

Radwaste, please do. I found this out from a girl I knew in army. She grew up on a farm, but it was dairy, not poultry. She gave me the lowdown on the egg industry. She was also apparently an authority on turkey farming, insisting that if they were left out in the rain, they'd drown.

Here's the wikipedia entry on the subject, and even has a picture of the cages. Sorry, I took her at her word, but it sounds like some points were exaggerated. The only information about the hormones was FDA-approved drugs. Hormones are actually against Federal law, which seems to suggest that hormones were used once upon a time. Beak filing is called "beak-trimming." And from what I see of the picture, these chickens have their beaks. At least most of their beaks.

She was also apparently an authority on turkey farming, insisting that if they were left out in the rain, they'd drown.
Posted by: Patrick

You know, I allways though that particular one was bullshit, until I saw it for myself

Turkeys really are stupid

OMG, momof4, you are not kidding about the difference in flavor of a fresh egg vs. a store-bought one! The first time I had a still-warm-from-under-the-bird egg, I thought I was imagining things, because my scrambled eggs tasted like a souffle'! After about six more, I realized it wasn't my imagination; they were just that much tastier.

Now I wish I could keep a hen of my own!

Why cant you?

I can tell the difference between a nonorganic and an organic banana: The latter comes bruised, skinny, laced with dangerous bacteria ("natural" fertilizer), and costs twice as much.

I get your point Patrick, and I appreciate your candor... I was not succinct in mine. When you start charging cruelty to animals, there are various organizations that get involved, and they are not nearly as friendly as you. "Henley said the farm was working with its animal-welfare consultants" - article] This indicates that they have to pay something for this. Cruelty is certainly an emotionally charged term. It is not usually bandied about in a neutral kind of way.

As far as people getting bent out of shape about the gavage feeding, I have twins who were born premature. For the first couple of weeks, that's exactly how they were fed: tube in the mouth, down the throat. It was necessary at the time (devlopmentally they hadn't developed the suck-swallow-breathe reflex fully), but didn't seem the bother them (trust me, kids cry when bothered).

Like everything, all it takes is selectivity of data to back up any claim. I'm sure for every article like this one someone else will drudge up a another report of abuse. I've come to accept that not everything in this world is brought to us in the best way, and that it's easy for each side to claim they're right. I'm pretty much down with the "do what you want, just quit preaching at me" way of life.