Discover French foie gras

[Camile]

http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f340/ ... e-gras.flv

[Shirley]

Oh Camile

That's awful - just absolutely disgusting. I thought it was going to be a joke at first but not so.

I knew it was bad, but didn't know it was that bad - I knew the ducks were force fed etc... I didn't know that the female ducklings were just culled and thrown away like that. It's totally barbaric.

I'd never have eaten the stuff anyway based on the small amount I knew about the practice, but now I wouldn't even share a table with someone that was eating it and I would let them know why LOUDLY!!!!

[Camile]

I knew it was bad too .. but never found out the extend of it until today.

Check this link, it has a bit more infos and his less "visual":
http://www.stopgavage.com/en/manifesto.php

[Andy Hamilton]

Can't say that I have ever eaten the stuff. There are many people who still do and take the moral ground and say that as long as the animals are treated fairly for most of their lives then it is ok to treat them like this at the end. Not so sure myself there are plenty of other foods out there to eat.

[Welsh Girls Allotment]

I can't quite articulate how I feel after seeing this, we know in our hearts factory farming of any kind is disgraceful but when you see it like this the mind boggles how do the people who do this for a living feel - can you imagine the person killing the female ducks - what emotions do they feel at the end of a shift ?

[Tay]

I haven't watched this (migraine and nausea for the past two days - I don't want to vomit but will if I watch), but I have seen many programmes on tv here showing similar to what is described.

I very much doubt that the person killing the females will feel bad at all as it is seen as normal. Easter and Christmas are the worst times for foie gras. There are plenty of tv ads, supermarket brochures full of special offers, and shelf upon shelf in the supermarkets here. Most, if not all French people love foie gras, and it is the ultimate for special occasions. It seems that people don't care how the animal was treated, as long as they get their 'treat' at the end of it.

I recall one programme on earlier this year showing a family-run foie gras factory. Everyone enjoyed their jobs, and if outsiders were taken on, it was seen as a real privilege to be able to work there.

I don't eat offal of any kind, and have never and will never eat this because of what is involved.

[bwaymark]

Chickens aren't force fed for the last ten days, but otherwise its the same for a chicken, being kept in small cages etc, and its the cockerals that are often necked at birth. Having said that, its a quirk of chicken keeping that boys and girls are born in equal numbers yet you can only have one cockeral for every group of hens (depending on how keep them) so your choice is either to raise the boys for a few months for meat, or to kill them as chicks (if they are a breed that you can sex as a chick). If you keep too many cockerals you end up torturing your hens (who can literally be shagged to death) and the cockaral will fight, eventually to the death. Its far more humane if you kill the boys.

Personally, I am much more concerned about the way we, in the UK, treat our chickens (and ducks and turkeys) than the way the French treat their ducks and geese ....

[the.fee.fairy]

I'm concerned about the way any country keeps the animals used for food.
I'm a firm believer in giving animals a decent life before they get killed and eaten (and killing them humanely, not sticking a knife in and watching them suffer).

What was that stuff being fed to the ducks? It looked to me like ground up baby females...

[bwaymark]

No, its grain. The idea started with Geese which, someone in France told me, naturally stuff themselves. You stick a funnel in the geese or duck's mouth and force feed it huge amounts of grain which swells the liver, which is then harvested and made into fois gras. Can't say I remember having it, but then I have never been a big fan of pate's and the like. The whole process doesn't sit very right with me, but then, as I said early, I reckon we'd do better to look at our own practices first then worry about what other countries are doing. I know fois gras is sold in this country, but nowhere near the scale that chicken bits are.....

[PeterNZ]

Sorry, have to go and give my lovely ducks some extra food now!!

How disgusting!

Cheers

Peter

[Camile]

"battery foie gras" is the way the vast majority of foie gras is produced ! which is alarming !

And if I posted that .. that's because I'm french so directly "touched" by it .. you should see the amount flying through at Christmas .. a family would buy 1 kilo of it easily ..

Personally, I prefer the pates compare to foie gras, but I hate it a good couple of times .. not anymore ...

There are a minority (very small amount) of people still producing a "free range" foie gras .. where the birds actually comes to the man feeding asking for food .. so it's still bad at my eyes to "stuff them" the human equivalent of 7kg of pastas in one go .. for their last 10 days.

Because the "dose" is more or less 450g of food within a few seconds ! that's bad !

You could buy the alternative "mousson de canard" .. which is a liver pate without using a sick liver from a mistreated animal ...

PS: I do raise the cockerels for the table .. so it's not live if I was a hard core animal activist .. this is just wrong ! and thought I'd remind it to the people as most of it is sold for Xmas ...

But these methods of production cuts down the price so now foie gras is not even as "exclusive" as it used to be 10 years ago, and is not only consumed for Xmas and New year anymore.

Camile

[Muddypause]

Seems appropriate to post a link to Compassion In World Farming.