johnnyhongkong says…

The recent ban of foie gras and the ensuing fights in Chicago are crazy. I keep imagining the police raiding a crack house and to find well heeled epicureans huddled in a corner trying to score their fix of fatty, waterfowl liver. Or narcotics detectives roll by Charlie Trotter’s and see that he’s serving a foie gras special (and he is wont to do even though he had declared, to all who would and would not listen, that the delicacy would never touch a plate that came from one of his kitchens), what are they going to do? Bust the joint like Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice? In reality, it’s more like Undercover Diner.

I have a personal list of five reasons why banning foie gras is ridiculous. Here are numbers 5 and 1:

5) Because if I ever open up my little restaurant, I may want to serve foie gras raviolis with shaved truffles.

1) Because in the context of fighting for the humane treatment of the animals that people eat, it’s a largely meaningless and empty gesture. It’s a speciality item. No one eats foie gras everyday. Since moms and dads making the family meal at home are not making foie gras ravilois for their kids, the amount of foie gras that’s sold in America is very small (its still a luxury item even in fine dining). There are two foie gras producers in America. Two. Sonoma Foie Gras and Hudson Valley Foie Gras and both have sterling reputations in the food industry for sustainable farming (these are the kinds of guys you want growing your food).

You want to know what gets eaten everyday? Steak. Fried chicken. Pork chops. The numbers are too awesome to compare. In America, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of cows, chickens, and hogs who are kept in tiny cages, covered in shit, eating feed containing parts of other animals, etc., versus a few thousand ducks and geese.

So if legislators, animal rights activists, Whole Foods, PETA, or any damn person really wanted to fight for the humane treatment of the animals that will end up on someone’s dinner plate, they’d start a fight with the corporate factory farms, the National Cattle Ranchers Association, Tyson’s Chicken, or the fast food industry, as Eric Schlosser did in Fast Food Nation, not foie gras.

Here’s a great resource for sustainanable meat choices. In addition, you can also join the growing trend of buying whole sides humanely raised beef, chicken and pork (and even bison in some areas) like these people have opted to do in this great article that Conrad Connecticut sent me. Apparently since terms like grass-fed and organic are being diluted by factory farms looking to charge a premium, consumers are beginning to look more and more into buying directly from the source and seem to be a few farms that are beginning to meet that demand (it reminds me of my first visit to the Milans in Wisconsin. They have two chest freezers filled to the top with their own butchered cattle and deer from hunting season, they keep this tally sheet on their refrigerator of services that have been rendered for them and how they will be paying with maple syrup (which they make) and steaks. For example, they might pay someone who fixed an engine with 10 pounds of steak and 2 quarts of maple syrup).

I don’t know. Maybe there is a movement of big city folk getting back to nature or something. Billy Joe London’s girlfriend said she wants to start a commune in rural Pennsylvania and she’s as urban as it gets. I keep trying to convince Mary Milan that we should do a modern update of the Fruitlands experiment: build a house somewhere on the Milan land, bring in our best friends, work the land, help figure out how we could sell the farm’s product at a premium price, make art, eat great food, do political activism, and chill.

It’d be a great life. Who’s in?