my life

So, I guess I'm a bit of a local celebrity...

Wow, amazing how big controversies can be stirred up so easily in a small town... I hope you're in for a long story.

As many of my loyal blog readers (if there are any, lol) probably know, I work for PETA and I've become very interested and involved in the animal rights movement since going vegetarian over two years ago. I was sent a message from a Moscow e-mail list by someone who knew my interests, in which a local woman expressed that to her dismay, a local French restaurant was just opening up in Moscow that had foie gras on their menu, and that she would be boycotting said restaurant. Foie gras is a French delicacy, the words foie gras literally mean "fat liver" in French. The only way to produce it is to cruelly force-feed geese and ducks until their livers are 6-10 times their normal size and they contract a liver disease. So it's a pretty disgusting dish, and the cruelty behind it is equally disgusting. Undercover investigations into foie gras farms in the US and Europe show what goes on, it ain't pretty, but you can see it on PetaTV.

So, I got on the Moscow e-mail list and thanked my fellow Moscowian (Moscowvite, Muscovite or whatever) for mentioning that a local restaurant would be serving fatty diseased duck liver. I asked if anyone would be interested in participating in a protest and called for the owner to remove it from his menu, as well as provided information and my reasons for not wanting this cruelty to be supported in my town. A few days later the online menu changed and foie gras was removed from it. I contacted the owner to ask if the change was permanent and gave him some information on foie gras. He responded saying he was concerned with the welfare of animals and was looking for a more humane source of foie gras. Well, there's really no such thing. Ducks and geese raised for foie gras are force-fed and would never eat thatmuch food voluntarily. They often get sores in their throats from the metal feeding pipes that are shoved down them. All this torture just for a "delicacy" the mostly poor college student population of Moscow probably can't afford anyway doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway, about the same time, I was contacted by the Moscow-Pullman Daily News about the planned protests and the foie gras debate in Moscow. In the article, the owner of the restaurant, called West of Paris, said that foie gras was removed from his menu because he ran out, and also said we had a point to object to foie gras. He insisted that there was a demand for it and that he would put it back on the menu once he found a more humane producer. I had mentioned this incident to PETA and they claimed it as a victory, since there's no such thing as a humane way to produce foie gras. The text of the Daily News article was:

Foie gras controversy hits Moscow

Activists up in arms over delicacy's inclusion on restaurant menu; item has
since been removed

By Alexis Bacharach Daily News staff writer
Published: 08-23-2006

Foie gras is no longer available at Moscow's West of Paris, but not for the
reasons one might think.

Restaurant owner Francis Foucachon sold out of the item his first week in
business.

He wants local activists, who got their hands on an outdated menu earlier
this week, to know their threats of protest mean nothing to him or his
staff.

"Here is the bottom line," he said. "I ordered a small amount just to see if
there was a demand in Moscow. It was such a huge success, we almost sold out
our first night."

Foie gras, French for fatty liver, is produced through a process of
force-feeding ducks and geese until their livers become saturated with fat.

Handlers insert tubes down the birds' throats and funnel pounds of cornmeal
into their stomachs several times a day.

Megan Prusynski, a local activist with People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals and the Humane Society of the United States, said consumption of
foie gras went down in areas that provided focused education and outreach
programs.

With that in mind, she's teaming with local and national groups, including
Compassion Speaks at Washington State University, to organize protests in
Friendship Square later this month.

"There are still a lot of people out there who don't know what foie gras is
or how it's made," she said. "When I heard there was a restaurant in Moscow
serving it, I started talking to people about doing some kind of protest to
raise people's awareness - maybe get it banned."

More than a dozen countries, including Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom,
Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Poland and Denmark, have
outlawed the French delicacy.

In the United States, lawmakers are proposing bans at the state and
municipal levels.

The California Legislature passed a phased ban last year on the production
and sale of foie gras. Earlier this month, city leaders in Chicago banned
the controversial item from all menus in the city.

"The people complaining about foie gras have a point," Foucachon said. "The
way the birds are being stuffed is questionable, and I do believe it's
important to treat animals humanely. I will put foie gras on my menu again
when I find a producer that doesn't engage in force feeding."

PETA spokesman Matt Prescott said that's a victory for animal rights,
because Foucachon will never find what he's looking for.

"There are producers in the industry who say their foie gras is produced
humanely, but such claims are unsubstantiated," he said. "Investigations at
every foie gras farm has uncovered incidents of sick, dead and abused
animals. We've seen birds with holes in their throats and bloody beaks.
We've seen farms where dead birds were dangling from wires, dripping blood
on the live birds."

Video footage and photo galleries on PETA's Web site provide images of birds
with gaping wounds, images of blood-soaked cages and buckets full of
feathered corpses.

"No animal should be subject to torture," Foucachon said. "But these things
they're complaining about, I would suggest American chickens are treated far
worse than the ducks and the geese. Why aren't people writing letters and
staging protests at the grocery stores and restaurants that sell chicken?"

Why stop there, he asked?

Foucachon suggested protests against restaurants that cook live lobsters.

"This is a group that was looking for something to use against my business
and they found something," he said. "While I believe there are some valid
concerns here, I'm not going to stop serving what people want. I will put
foie gras on my menu again."

Alexis Bacharach can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 238, or by e-mail at
abacharach@dnews.com

Well, the controversy pot stirs and I'm asked to appear on a radio show on KUOI, the University of Idaho's campus radio station. I immediately contact my friend Kelsey who was a PETA intern and organized an animal rights group on campus (I protested KFC with her last semester). She is also quite a bit more well-spoken on animal rights issues, so we both went into the station this morning for an interview. We discussed foie gras & the local controversy as well as animal rights, PETA, factory farming, vegetarianism, and a laundry list of related issues. It has been wonderful how much press the issue is getting locally, and the interview went very well despite a couple challenging and a bit hostile people calling in. Kelsey & I kicked some ass for the animals though; I must admit that activism is exciting!

So, I'm sure this saga isn't over, but maybe we opened a few eyes around here, maybe West of Paris will keep foie gras off the menu and we can move on to other activities & protests... or maybe we still have more work to do there. Several countries, the state of California, and the city of Chicago have recently passed laws banning the production and/or sale of foie gras. So it's possible to enable change on the local level, and I'm hopeful. If you'd like more information on foie gras, please check out this article on GoVeg.com, NoFoieGras.org by the Farm Sanctuary, or the aforementioned Undercover Investigation video from PETA. Thanks for caring, but watch out for the greusome video.

I will try to make the audio of our interview this morning available once I receive a copy of it. We discussed foie gras and animal rights for nearly an hour & a half! :) Stay tuned.

Labels: activism, vegetarianism/animal rights

posted by Megan @ 5:24 PM