The Birds We Consume

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By Larry Parker (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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Bruised, crippled, diseased, and nearly catatonic, the "spent" hens are finally shipped to slaughter or to landfills to be buried alive.

FOIE GRAS

Ducks and geese raised for foie gras also live every day of their lives in misery and are arguably the most tortured and abused of all the animals on factory farms. Debilled at an early age, the birds are kept in filthy sheds, either crammed and crowded into small pens, or worse still, confined in individual cages, deprived of the ability to walk, turn around, or spread their wings. Sanitation in the sheds is nonexistent, as the floors are covered in feces and vomit. Just as tragic, yet not as well publicised, is the fact that ducks require regular submersion in water to maintain their health, and yet access to this type of activity simply doesn't exist. Their eyes and mucous membranes clog with infections, and many are permanently blinded.

But it's the practice of force feeding which constitutes the true aspiration of cruelty. Two or three times a day workers rotate throughout the sheds grabbing each of the ducks and jamming a long metal tube down their throats. Up to a pound of nutritionally deficient corn mash, about 10% of the bird's total body weight, is then pumped through the tube directly into their bellies. To grasp the effect of this, try to imagine a 150 pound man having 15 pounds of meal forced into him two or even three times a day.

This routine continues for up to 4 weeks, and the impact on the birds is nothing short of devastating. The most prominent and in fact the intended result is that their livers become diseased and swell to ten times normal size. The inflated organ rubs and presses against other organs of the body causing extreme pain. Breathing becomes laborious for the birds, while their legs are forced to angle outwards, making the act of walking nearly impossible. In this crippled state, they're unable to even groom themselves.

A large percentage of the birds suffer from obesity, pneumonia, blood toxicity, nerve damage, anal hemorrhaging, bacterial and fungal infections in the digestive tract, and impaction of undigested food in the esophagus. Many of them die when their livers become so huge they literally burst open. Many die from suffocation, as they try to inhale regurgitated food. Many die because they're unable to defend themselves from the numerous rats who roam the sheds with impunity. And as if this weren't enough, many die simply because of irresponsible workers carelessly puncturing their throats with the feeding tube.

Finally, after about 4 weeks, the surviving birds are slaughtered, and their enlarged diseased livers are harvested for the gourmet delicacy known as foie gras. Bon appetit!

At present only two companies are responsible for the overwhelming majority of foie gras production in the United States: Sonoma Foie Gras in California and Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York. Landmark legislation enacted by California in 2004 bans the practice of force-feeding as well as the sale of foie gras produced from force feeding, thereby ensuring that Sonomo Foie Gras will soon be out of business. However, the larger of the two companies, Hudson Valley, is still operating without restriction, and is responsible for the raising and slaughtering of 400,000 birds per year. But even this is an insignificant amount compared to the more than 24 million birds killed for foie gras every year in France, accounting for 75% of the worlds total production.

Numerous European nations have outlawed foie gras production, including Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark. Israel, once the world's fourth largest producer, banned foie gras production in 2005. The European Union, meanwhile, continues to place pressure on France and other producing nations within it's scope, while moving closer to enacting legislation which could one day abolish this offensive practice throughout all of Europe.

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