There's a brief item in the February 12 issue of New York magazine-nauseatingly entitled "Ommm vs. Yummm"-in which Geoffrey Gray tells of a meeting at Jivamukti Yoga in Manhattan. The subject of this meeting is foie gras (pronounced fwah grah) or more specifically: how this alleged epicurean indulgence is made. "Aint' no yogis eating foie gras," declares Hip-hop mogul and longtime vegan, Russell Simmons. "It's barbaric, it's crazy."
Foie gras (French for "fatty liver") is a $20 million a year business in New York State and a single producer like Hudson Valley Foie Gras, for example, slaughters 6000 ducks a week. Geoffrey Gray betrays his bias by characterizing foie gras as "rich, velvety, and controversial bird livers." Simmons, as you might imagine, sees things a just a little differently. "I sit here and watch people eat steak and eat foie gras and do stupid shit all day long," he says. "I'm really not an angry vegan, but human beings are fucking rude."
The local anti-foie gras protests, for now, will focus on Fairway supermarkets in but Fairway partner Steven Jenkins told New York that the "foie gras weirdos" are "doing nothing more than preying on the guilt-ridden liberals of the Upper West Side."
Besides his laughably flawed appraisal of the radical potential of Upper West Side liberals, Jenkins is also dead wrong with his "doing nothing more" dismissal. Dedicated activists-from coast to coast-are shining a light on an utterly repellent practice. Here's how the Farm Sanctuary describes the foie gras process: "At just a few months old, ducks are confined inside dark sheds and force-fed enormous amounts of food several times a day. A farm worker grabs each duck and, one by one, thrusts a metal pipe down their throats so that a mixture of corn can be forced directly into their gullets. In just a matter of weeks, the ducks become grossly overweight and their livers expand up to 10 times their normal size." (For more, don't miss this video.)
"About 10 percent of the ducks don't make it to slaughter," says vegetarian activist, Pamela Rice, "They die when their stomachs burst."
To a veterinarian, the ensuing human-induced disorder is called "hepatic lipidosis." To a gourmet chef, these fattened, diseased livers are called "foie gras."
It pains me to to know how much we love our pets and yet its so okay to ignore what is done to animals who are not.
Nature is perfect. Through this perfect design we were given certain attributes. Physical evidence shows that we are not meat eaters. Meat eaters have fangs. Our teeth are flat like vegetarians in the animal kingdon, (who are very strong, btw, e.g., oxen, gorilla, elephant, etc. Meat eaters have a very short intestine. Our intestine is something like a 22 compared to an animal's 2, something like that. Meat takes two days to pass through our intestine and it isn't fresh, and it isn't unadulterated meat to begin with, it's loaded with chemicals and preservatives. So this is what takes residence in our guts for a time, (and I hear some of it never leaves without a cleansing program). Nice, huh? There's so much more that will continue to keep the drug industry in business.
It's important not to support these corporate drones' policies by paying attention to what's going on with the food we consume. One other thing, in my opinion, the way we feed and slaughter animals, the chemicals released into their bodies immediately during these horrific practices, makes its way into our bodies and psychies and has a lot to do with systemic violence.
That's it. I wish there were more articles like yours. Diane
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Diane's News Clips (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 241 diaries, 31 comments)
on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:48:28 AM
