THE GURGLING COD

Volunteer mice binge on foie

Posting stuff on Fridays in the summer always feels as if one is chasing the folks hastening to the jitney or whatever down the street, but I am confident that the new Tenneesse foie story will get twisted like a pretzel, so I thought I might at least encourage folks to read more than the first graf of the press release about the research.  Too busy? Here is presumptive summary of the mainstream/blogosphere coverage of this story:

FOIE GRAS WILL GIVE YOU A BRAAAINN DIZZEEZ! AAAAH! MAD COW! BRAINS!*

Epilog, usually surefooted, leans in this direction. I am not a medical doctor, but I can read at or near grade level, and the actual summary of the research from the actual flacks at UT suggests that the research is not quite that smoking gun-like:

In their study, mice prone to develop AA amyloidosis were injected or fed amyloid extracted from foie gras. Within eight weeks, a majority of the animals developed extensive amyloid deposits in the liver, spleen, intestine and other organs.

Call me a Pollyanna, but it seems as if there is a considerable difference between toying with a terrine and injecting extracts. Alan Solomon, the lead researcher, offers the following caveat:

"It is not known if there is an increase of Alzheimer's disease, diabetes or other amyloid-related disease in people who have eaten foie gras," cautioned Solomon. "Our study looked at the existence of amyloid fibrils in foie gras and showed that it could accelerate the development of AA amyloidosis in susceptible mice. Perhaps people with a family history of Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or other amyloid-associated diseases should avoid consuming foie gras and other foods that may be contaminated with fibrils."

Setting aside the ethical questions for a moment,  this  research in and of itself, does not seem to change the conversation about foie too much. We had not, prior to this research, thought of the stuff as a health food. But

FOIE! BRAINS! ZOMBIES! AAAAAH!

makes a better lede.

*Conversely, the bad boy bloggers will poo-poo the whole thing, and announce plans to float a whole lobe of foie in a seal cub bolito misto.

D'Artagnan joins the duel!

The following missive from D'Artagnan keeps showing up in my inbox, so I might as well post it on up. The whole text follows, but a few prefatory comments. I'm on the record as being pro-foie, but the rhetoric on both sides makes me queasier than a funnel full of grain, and this is no exception.

First graf. "The animal rights terrorists are claiming another victory in the battle for our dinner plate." I would have thought that W&co.  would have taken some of the sheen off of calling your opponents "terrorists," but guess not.  Unless the PETA folks kidnapped Puck's kids and threatened to behead them unless he took foie off the menu, "terrorist" seems inappropriate. There have been terroristic acts associated w/ the radical fringe of the animal rights movement, but that does not mean that supporting animal rights makes you a terrorist. By this logic, because some Greenpeace members have done some monkey-wrenching, driving a Prius would make you a terrorist.

Graf 4. "Questionable tactics"? Sure. "Deep Pockets"? Did I miss a memo?

Graf 5. "Spread the news that the 5,000-year-old tradition of foie gras is not only delicious but also humane!" This would seem to involve a somewhat elastic definition of humane. Again, I am against the ban, but  because I think that the distinction between foie and other kinds of meat is specious, and I am unwilling to give up my seat at near the top of the food chain. Also "Why is a minority defining the framework of this debate, when those who love foie gras and want to protect the right
to eat it have not been heard on this issue?" One possible reason for the heat this issue generates is that involves two conflicting notions of rights that are a) evolving b) dodgy. Peter Singer, et al, have done much to articulate the idea of animal rights, but it is not an inherent or intuitive truth. But they do have an evolving literature. Conversely, and I welcome rejoinders, I cannot see where this idea of a right to eat foie gras comes from. Seriously. Even the right to party, or the right to fight, might be enumerated under freedom of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances, respectively, but I cannot see a legal foundation for the idea that we can eat whatever we want, more evolved than a general notion that it is a free country.

Graf  8: "Get the facts, sign the petition, and contribute at: www.artisanfarmers.org." As it happens, "the Artisan Farmers Alliance (AFA), a newly created group representing all of America's foie gras farmers and others involved in bringing artisanal agricultural products to the American table." Poking around the site suggests that it is essentially an industry lobbying group sailing under a flag that gives it a little bit more of a feelgood, Greenmarketty vibe. There is nothing wrong with getting your message out, though this comes close to astroturfing. It does seem a bit much to ask for donations for your industry lobbying group.

I am not sure whom D'Art is targeting with this missive, but it should be possible to defend foie without insulting anybody's intelligence.

The animal rights terrorists are claiming another victory in the battle
for our dinner plate. Under pressure from these groups, Wolfgang Puck
announced a program that bans foie gras from his menus. He was
"assisted" in crafting his statement by the very same people who have
harassed him since 2002 :Farm Sanctuary and the Humane Society of the
United States (HSUS).

For D'Artagnan, this represents a threat to an ancient tradition as
well as to our business. It's a threat to the fundamental freedom to
choose how we live and what we eat.
The animal rights agenda is to eliminate all meat from our tables. They
fight this campaign by issue, by chef, by city, and by purveyor, one at
a time. Foie gras is an easy target and they have made it a cause
célèbre. They will not stop there.

Ironically, foie gras farming is just the type of small-scale,
sustainable, traditional, humane agriculture that Mr. Puck claims he is
working to promote. D'Artagnan is built on dedication to free range,
organic, humanely raised meat and the highest possible standards in
animal husbandry. We are proud to support small farms that adhere to
strict humane standards, and believe emphatically that foie gras meets
those standards.

We at D'Artagnan do not object to vegetarians, and ask that they
respect our decision to eat meat. Why should 3% of the population with
very deep pockets and questionable tactics tell 97% of the population
what to eat and not to eat? Why is a minority defining the framework of
this debate, when those who love foie gras and want to protect the right
to eat it have not been heard on this issue?

Stand with us and declare that we will not allow the animal rights
agenda to dictate our diet. Spread the news that the 5,000-year-old
tradition of foie gras is not only delicious but also humane! We will
continue to support your right to eat it!

Apathy is the enemy here. Please help . Here's what you can do:

When you see foie gras on a menu or at the grocery store thank the
owner, manager and server for protecting your right to choose what to
eat
Ask for foie gras if they don't have it
Forward this email to your friends, blog, write a letter to the editor,
your representatives, etc.
Get the facts, sign the petition, and contribute at:
www.artisanfarmers.org

Help D'Artagnan fight the good (food) fight.

All for One, and Food for All!

Puckish

Update: The editorial page of America's paper of record agrees. It's like we speak each other's unspoken language.

Some news out of airport concessionaire/celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck's camp:

WASHINGTON, DC (March 22, 2007)—The Wolfgang Puck Companies have implemented an historic animal welfare program that's the first of its kind. The Humane Society of the United States applauded Wolfgang Puck's nine-point program aimed at raising the bar on farm animal treatment and curbing many of the worst cruelties associated with factory farming. These new standards cover all Wolfgang Puck lines of business including fine dining group restaurants, express franchises, catering and events, and consumer products.

So far, so good, according to the press release from the Humane Society. But Puck's precepts are a bit odd in their expression:

Wolfgang Puck's nine-point program, created in conjunction with The HSUS and Farm Sanctuary, will be fully implemented for all Wolfgang Puck companies, starting with the 14 fine dining restaurants, by the end of 2007. The nine include the following:

1. Wolfgang Puck has now eliminated foie gras from the menu of all of its dining establishments. Foie gras is produced by force-feeding ducks or geese to the point where their livers swell up to ten times their normal size.

2. Wolfgang Puck will not use eggs from laying hens confined in battery cages. Caged laying hens are kept in such restrictive conditions, they cannot even spread their wings.

3. Wolfgang Puck will not serve pork from producers who confine breeding sows in gestation crates. These cruel devices restrict animals from even turning around or performing many of their other behaviors for nearly their entire lives.

4. Wolfgang Puck will not serve veal from producers that confine their calves in individual veal crates. This inhumane intensive confinement practice prevents calves from even turning around or walking for months on end.

5. Wolfgang Puck will feature delicious vegetarian options on its menus, as many consumers who want to eat well and humanely look for these selections.

7. Wolfgang Puck will send a letter to the companies' chicken and turkey meat suppliers indicating its interest in Controlled Atmosphere Killing,* a slaughter method involving dramatically less suffering than typical methods.

I wish that he'd had the sack to come up with one more precept, so we could have Wolfgang Puck's Ten Commandments2.0.** These are laudable precepts, by and large, but it's hard not to think that LA Eater might be on to something with the notion this is a way to perk up a flagging brand. Most notably, Puck's sensible production-side dictates get pushed behind the consumption-oriented,  literally headline-grabbing foie gras ban. As I've opined elsewhere, the foie ban is kind of like being involved in a Papillion breed rescue organizaton. You are mitigating suffering, but a very small spectrum of the suffering that humans inflict on animals.  It is, because of its class connotations, the softest target imaginable for PETA, et al. To their credit, the NY Times got it,  focusing on the larger animal welfare issues related to Puck's move, while the LA Times was blinded with foie.  On the other hand, any effort to remove foie will  spark caterwauling from folks like Ruhlman and Snack, generating pub for Puck's empire.***

*See also Ottawa Modified Death.

**It is fun to rewrite the originals in this style:

"Wolfgang Puck will not make unto Wolfgang Puck any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Wolfgang Puck will not covet Wolfgang Puck's  neighbour's house, Wolfgang Puck shalt not covet Wolfgang Puck's neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is Wolfgang Puck's neighbour's.

***For the record, I like foie gras. I'm against banning it,  but largely because I think the specter of gavage is a red herring drawing attention away from much larger scale animal welfare issues. Come to think of it, if I ran PR for Tyson, I'd propose covertly funding anti-foie campaigns as a way to keep PETA out of the hen house.

Big Shoulders are for big shrugs

The aforementioned ordeal did involve an isosceles triangle with Chicago at its apex, which allowed for a very thorough perusal of the Chicago Sun-Times, which garnered the following items of interest.

Hot Doug’s is in hot water with the city. The Northwest Side hot dog joint, known as much for its thuringer as it is for specials like gyros sausage with creme fraiche tzatziki, is the first restaurant in Chicago slapped with a $250 ticket for offering — in sausage form — the outlawed delicacy, foie gras.

As a perceptive observer noted in response to this item, while this may or may not be a miscarriage of justice of Sacco & Vanzetti proportions, but it is, hands down, just about the cheapest way to get exposure for your restaurant. In exchange for $250, Doug Sohn gets to look like the Rosa Parks of gourmands, and grab a few column inches. If the foie ban comes to NYC, look for Deathwatch'd establishments to stage special seal clubbing events on sidewalks in front of their restaurants. Also:

Is an Alain Ducasse Chicago restaurant in the works?
The decorated French chef -- the only chef in the world to have three restaurants with three Michelin stars -- appeared to be on a scouting mission recently in the Windy City.

On Dec. 7, chef Graham Elliot Bowles at Avenues in the Peninsula hotel got a call: Ducasse was on a plane a few hours from Chicago, and he wanted to eat at Avenues.
Bowles said it was past 10 p.m. when Ducasse and two guests arrived, but the restaurant stayed open, and Ducasse told the young chef to cook at his whim.
<snip>
"It was like cooking for the Messiah," said Bowles of serving Ducasse a meal that included venison tartare, salmon with "sauerkraut bubbles" and a Kobe strip steak with smoked potato beignets.
Restaurant manager Nicolas Dubort, who is from Paris, exchanged a few words in French with Ducasse, telling the chef "he would be a delight to have on the Chicago restaurant scene."
Ducasse smiled and said, "It is a little bit cold," adding that he was "undecided" but that "Chicago was a pleasant city," Dubort said.

Sacre Bleu! Or maybe not. This happened back on Dec. 7th, and was in the newspaper yesterday. This is hardly Nixon-in-China level intrigue, but it is curious that it comes out so far after the fact. It is hard to imagine that the S-T had Janet Fuller, the author of this article, all Woodward and Bernstein on this until she broke the story, so one has to wonder if Alain's people passed the tip on as part of a pub campaign. Also, this kind of thing:

Another French uber-chef, Joel Robuchon, confirmed this month that he is planning to open a Chicago restaurant by the end of next year.

Ducasse's apparent interest "only helps to cement the fact that Chicago is this big food town now," Bowles said. "It makes it better for everybody."

This line of thinking makes me a) think of the Simpsons monorail episode and b) wish my critiquing-late-capitalism chops were a little bit sharper. The phenomenon of the global "uber-chef" has made provincials of us all. The notion that a superstar from away setting up an outpost in your town makes your town a "big food town" is not limited to Chicago, viz the NYC  Robucop hype of last fall, but no matter where, it makes dining in cities with their own talented chefs and interesting restaurants seem like shopping at an outlet mall -- "we should go to the one in Kittery -- it has a Coach outlet and a Ducasse restaurant." If you start using franchises from away as a yardstick of your rep as a municipality, you are in the same kind of conversation as Commerce, GA vs. Gaffney, SC. (The outlets in Commerce have a Starbucks, FYI.) Alinea, Blackbird and a host of other places make Chicago a dining destination, not Ducasse.*

*For my five years in Chicago, the U had me on a fries and sauce budget, so my sense of fine dining in Chicago is a) hazy b) limited and c) dated.

 

Like Brit Brit says...

...huh? Burros drops a variety of science in today's Eating Well, as well as the following:

Et tu, Ben & Jerry?
First Chicago banned the sale of foie gras. Then Whole Foods stopped selling live lobster. Now Ben and Jerry’s has pledged not to use eggs that come from a farm that the Humane Society of the United States has accused of being cruel to its laying hens. Animal rights activists are on a roll. While they pursue high-profile cases they are also signing up farmers who, in exchange for taking a pledge to treat their animals humanely, are permitted to label their products “Certified Humane.”

In its latest efforts on behalf of animals, the Humane Society has shamed Ben and Jerry’s into changing to eggs from cage-free hens by calling the company hypocritical for criticizing “giant industrial farming operations” on its Web site.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the Illinois Restaurant Association, along with other interested parties, has sued the city to halt enforcement of the foie gras ban.

And Whole Foods is reportedly building special housing to make lobsters more comfortable in its stores so its customers won’t have to go elsewhere to buy them.

Granted, this is Burros rounding up the un-fun-what's bad for you food news, rather than breathlessly chronicling the do-si-dos of chefs and restaurants -- enjoy that latte, by the way* -- but this item does not really make what one likes to think of as "sense." The lede dusts off the good old slippery slope, (basically: "If they take our foie gras/AK 47/2 Live Crew cassettes away, then they will come for our salmon/hunting rifle/Ulysses) but the item itself describes one step in one direction, and two half steps in the other. Those zanies at the Humane Society have encouraged Ben & Jerry to use cage free eggs (not what it sounds like, BTW), and emboldened by this victory for animal welfare, um, the foie gras ban is under legal attack,  and, er, WF is revisiting the lobster question. If Burros had covered the 1924 Army-Notre Dame game instead of Grantland Rice, one imagines it would go like this:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They combined for 83 yards on 26 carries, as Army held off the Fighting Irish, 10-7.

*Evidently, that caffe mocha with whipped cream has more calories than a quarter pounder w/ cheese. I kind of love the thought of salarymen and -women pouring off the subway and into the office in the morning, absently nibbling on a QP.

Somewhere, Thoreau is bummed out.

America has its eye on Chicago, wondering which jackass will be the Rosa Parks of the foie gras resistance:*

In one of the more unlikely (and opulent) demonstrations of civil disobedience, a handful of restaurants here that never carry foie gras, the fattened livers of ducks and geese, featured it on the very day that Chicago became the first city in the nation to outlaw sale of the delicacy.

I have here and there mused on this ban and its meaning, but this does almost as much as a yellow bikini to bring me a little closer to PETA's point of view. Eating well, in any sense of the term, involves respect for ingredients, and for those of us to choose eat meat, that goes double for the animals we eat. Putting foie gras on pizza, or a "Vesuvio-style entree pairing foie gras and tenderloin ($33.95) just to buck the new ordinance," is disrespectful.  I do not support a foie gras ban, because the suffering it alleviates is minute in scale compared to what happens to create McNuggets. Foie gras is a red herring: like so much in American culture, the foie gras comes out of a focus on consumers, rather than producers.  Even incremental improvements in the life of the average Tyson chicken would do far more to advance the ethical treatment of animals. Indeed, for a vegan to make foie gras a focus seems morally dishonest -- somewhat akin to the kind of extreme cases anti-abortion crusaders focus on. That said, adding foie gras to stuffed pizza for the sake of being "politically incorrect" is the kind of oafishness that frequently  makes it hard to take Chicago seriously.**
*Here is the text of Thoreau's essay to clip and save before you storm the barricades with your fleur de sel.
**I lived there for five years, and enjoyed it, mostly.

First they came for the foie gras

We have the answer all of the "what next" gumflapping in the wake of local foie gras bans, and WF's new lobster policy, viz:

What’s next, no oysters? No sir—they’re alive! No more salmon roe—think of all those unborn salmon you're smearing on your toast and dotting on your blini! All the good salmon deeds that will remain undone! All that emotional life of the unborn chickens! Gone! Delicately poached and nestled on frissée!*

What's next? Now, the killjoys  have declared a fatwa on mouth-shaped urinals. At a McDonalds. In Holland no less.

 

AMSTERDAM

Netherlands — A McDonald's fast-food outlet in the south east of the Netherlands has agreed to remove urinals that are shaped like wide-open red lips.  The decision was taken after a shocked American customer complained to the McDonald's head office in the US.
Owner Giel Pijper said on Wednesday that the bright red, mouth-shaped urinals, named 'Kisses',  are works of art. But a different view is taken of them in  America. The urinals are being removed and will be sold off. "I'm not going to harp on about a pair of urinals," he said.

They are the work of Dutch woman Meike van Schijndel.  She is the designer at the Utrecht-based firm Bathroom Mania! Speaking to Expatica in 2004, she said the urinals were designed as a fun cartoon mouth and not as a woman's mouth.

She stressed that the idea her urinals represented a man peeing into a woman's mouth never occurred to her, nor to many men and women she had spoken to. Her company was inundated with orders after the Virgin Airlines controversy, Van Schijndel said.

Best of all, the caption for the picture above read as follows: "Degrading to women or toilet cartoon fun?" Why does it always have to be one or the other? I am not a ceramicist, but perhaps an alternative that would smooth ruffled feathers would be urinals shaped like geese with gavage funnels in place. Just trying to help.  (Thanks to the keen-eyed  Slobra for the tip.)

*As recently as 2003, Ruhlman was writing, some say quite well, about heart surgeons. Explanations for the Maddenization of Ruhlman are welcome.

I saw a man, he force-fed a goose

When foie gras is outlawed, only outlaws will serve foie gras. Mayor Daley II's bemusement:

We have children getting killed by gang leaders and dope dealers. We have real issues here in this city. And we’re dealing with foie gras? Let’s get some priorities. Our priorities should be children, the quality of education. It should be seniors. We should worry about the gas price. We should worry about the global economy.”*

He claims that there are only about four spots in Chicago serve it, which seems low, considering that it has become such a ubiquitous luxe symbol they probably have it as an option on the burgers they serve at the Cheescake Factory. Others quoted in the article point out that helping the poultry does not mean endorsing gang violence, but no one mentions that much more suffering could be eliminated by banning the McNugget.   I've opined before that the whole foie gras contretemps is a whippet, morally speaking, but with the benefit of a seat on the sidelines, I would be interested to see the foie hit the fan if anyone ever suggests banning foie gras in NYC.
*When a sausage, potholes and snowplows guy like Daley starts making offhand references to "the global economy,"  that just might be a sign that things are real f-ed up. Just saying. In any case, like so many of us, Daley II is not the man his father was, and I heartily commend to you Mike Royko's biograpy of Daley, pere, Boss. It's kind of like The Power Broker, but in a size you could hand out to trick-or-treaters.
 

The City of Big Livers

Hard to believe the city that works, Hog Butcher to the World, Chicago, has become a hotbed of anti foie gras agitation. A few  things seem notable in this contretemps:
The movement to ban foie gras seems to have as much to do with the context of the end product as the cruel process, motivated as much by a resentment of the likes of Alain Ducasse and his patrons as it is by a love of geeese.  From a utiltarian standpoint of reducing the amount of suffering in the world, banning chicken would seem to do much more good. The life of a Tyson's chicken does not seem appreciably pleasanter than that of a foie gras goose, and there are a lot more of them, but chicken fingers are not the snack of plutocrats.
Also, intentionally or not, lobbying for a ban suggests that Chicago is the kind of town where foie gras will be thrust upon you at  every turn. Certainly Chicago is a well-regarded dining destination, but proposing a ban on foie gras suggests that there are lobes of goose liver lurking behind every Old Style sign. Like the topless squeegee scandal in Canada in the late 90s, this is the kind of crisis that will have some folks calling their travel agents. If I were on the chamber of commerce of some sort of Southwest Airlines kind of town, like Manchester, New Hampshire, or Jacksonville, Florida, I would loudly call for a foie gras ban, sit back, and wait for hotel reservations to spike.
In general, anti-foie gras sentiment seems to function as part of a moral calculus I am calling the whippet. In real life, ski mountaineering in particular, you attach a whippet to your ski pole as a device that, in theory, will allow you to stop yourself from sliding down a glacier if you fall. In moral issues, the whippet is the opposite of a slippery slope, in that it demarcates the boundary between what is acceptable, and what is not. Defining foie gras as outside the pale of what you are willing to eat reinforces the idea that everything uphill of that point on the slope is ok. In other words, sentiment against foie gras works, perversely, to justify other kinds of animal consumption. I say this as a consumer of all kind of meats, including foie gras, (the latter limited as much by budget and geography as anything else). In sum, from here, it looks like it's about everything but the goose.