A few days ago Arnold Schwartzenegger, governor of California, has
signed a law prohibiting production and selling of foie gras - goose
liver pate. The thing is that the civilized world is becoming more and
more humanistic, and the production of the delicacy involves
especially sophisticated torture of animals.
At special goose-growing farms the geese are deprived of any
possibility to see not only a water pool, but even the common grass.
They are fed by force. A worker inserts a metal pipe through a
forcedly opened beak, and a machine shoots into it high-calorie food,
exceeding regular norm 10-20 times. If people were fed this way, they
would receive about 10 kilograms of hard food - mostly corn and
peanuts. This procedure is conducted several times a day, while the
birds are intentionally deprived of the ability to move, being
permanently gripped by a special clutch. As a result the geese get
cirrhosis of the liver, and it enlarges 10-20 times.
Some birds don't even survive until the moment of slaughtering - their
stomach just explodes. Some of them die because of wounds caused by
the pipe inserted into their bowels, some are eaten alive by rats,
because unable to move animals can't show any resistance. In
California the action of protest was started by activists who
penetrated into a construction area in Sonora county where a farm was
being built for production of goose liver pate. They poured cement
into water pipes and destroyed everything they could. As a reply, the
owners of the farm raised a scandal in the press, calling the animal
defenders vandals and terrorists. However, the zoodefenders undertook
another raid - now to a working farm. As a result, they have made
terrible photos disclosing indescribable tortures of clutched birds.
Around each of them everything was covered with what was ejected from
their stomachs. Necks of geese were covered with ulcers teeming with
worms. Some were already dead and partly eaten by rats. The activists
took away some sick birds and presented them to the judgement of the
public, and also gave interviews to representatives of the press.
Later numerous demonstrations took place around "Aqua", a prestigious
restaurant in the center of San Francisco, during which the activists
distributed flyers telling about the origin of the main dish of the
restaurant's menu.
By new laws, the production of goose liver pate and also selling it in
the territory of California are strictly prohibited - though only
since 2012. However, it is already clear that the liver business has
no future on Californian land. In addition, Hilton hotels all over
American territory have already set a moratorium on foie gras.
In Russia, as usual, everything is turned upside down, and while the
world's general public is struggling with the cruel production, in
Moscow inflated liver is turned into a cult. With the beginning of
cold days the most expensive and respectable restaurants of the
capital included the pate in their menu. In some places even weeks of
foie gras were held. Tourist companies have quickly reacted to the
fashion and included in their Paris tours visits to bird-breeding
farms with degustation of the pate. A few days ago a fashionable TV
program by Marianna Maximovskaya has shown a story about the liver, in
which our domestic nouveau riches who have tasted foie gras in
European restaurants were explaining how and with which wine it is
right to consume it. Now the pate adorns the windows of "Eliseevsky"
and "French fashon" at Tverskaya Street, which sell goods for the
category of Moscow residents with income exceeding 10,000 dollars a
month. And taking into account that there is 100,000 millionaires in
Moscow, it is clear that the delicacy doesn't lie there for long.
It hurts to realize it, but Russia has again become a place where
civilized countries dump their waste. Even though it is not
radioactive but food waste. For example, in Israel forcible feeding of
poultry was prohibited a year ago, though before that the country was
on the third place in the world by the production of goose liver pate,
France as yet remaining the leader. In Great Britain the ban is active
for several years already. And in the countries where forced feeding
is still permitted, not much time is left to count the profits: in
2005 EU countries are going to ban the production and selling of foie
gras on their territories. But the producers are not going to abandon
sound profits so easily, which means the need in new markets and
territories to build poultry farms. That's when "wild" Russia was
remembered.
However, besides ethical reasons there are also medical ones that can
make one to ponder about the usefulness of foie gras consumption. Here
is the opinion of British doctors: "Goose liver is a carcinogenic
product in which the quantity of poisons, fats and cholesterol is
several hundreds times higher than normal", - Megapolis writes.
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