Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Chicago bans foie gras

The dozen or so restaurants in town that serve the expensive French delicacy will be subject to $250 to $500 fines if they continue to do so. California has banned the production, but not the serving, of the fattened goose liver. (Fran Spielman, “City council approves foie gras ban”, Chicago Sun-Times, Apr. 26 (via Bainbridge)).

The dozen or so restaurants in town that serve the expensive French delicacy will be subject to $250 to $500 fines if they continue to do so. California has banned the production, but not the serving, of the fattened goose liver. (Fran Spielman, “City council approves foie gras ban”, Chicago Sun-Times, Apr. 26 (via Bainbridge)).

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4 Comments

  • This foie gras ban is ridiculous. Here’s a story about it by Andrew Gumbel, from the London Independent (sorry, my crappy Comcast Internet is down, or I’d make the link on my blog software, but here it is: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article101531.ece). And here’s an excerpt:

    Mr. Jaubert said his adversaries were picking the wrong target. The Californian duck farm, operating under the name Sonoma Foie Gras, was free-range. Animals spent almost all their lives outside, he said, except for the final period of grain-feeding in air-conditioned buildings. “This is extremely good treatment, certainly compared to the way the big chicken producers behave with their animals,” he said.

    Mr. Manrique, who comes from Gascony, the heart of duck country in south-west France, has been an ambassador for foie gras for years. “Force-feeding is really the wrong word,” he told a group of cooking students in San Francisco a couple of years ago. “The geese see the food we offer them and run after us. They say, ‘Give me more’.”

    Such remarks may not sit well with the “meat is murder” crowd, but science is beginning to show that he may not be entirely wrong. An article in the journal British Poultry Science in 2001 found “no significant indication that force-feeding is perceived as an acute or chronic stress by male mule ducks”.

    And here’s a guy from New Zealand from the LA Times’ letters to the editor. Well, actually, the link is dead, but I’ll post the link to a quote from my blog: (http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2003/08/if_its_good_for.html)

    Here’s what I wrote:

    If It’s Good For The Goose…
    Is the foie gras process bad for the ducks and geese? In Wednesday’s LA Times Letters To The Editor section, Norm Drexel, in Christchurch, New Zealand, responded to a story about foie gras-inspired vandalism around San Francisco. Drexel doubts that Cem Akin, a PETA researcher mentioned in the story, has actually witnessed the gavage of geese (the feeding process by which foie gras is produced). Drexel explains:

    I don’t pretend to be able to read a duck’s mind, but they show no obvious signs of fear before or distress after feeding. When brought into the pen, they push to be first in line.

  • I wonder what the legal definition of a fat goose would be. Would the BMI be calculated to determine whether the goose was unlawfully overweight.

    Perhaps there should be similar restrictions on customers. No one over 35 BMI should be served, just like bars have to cut off patrons at risk for excessive imbibition.

    • By nevins

  • I would imagine that you, too, would push to be first in line if you were starved for most of the day. I wonder if these ducks and geese are allowed to graze throughout the day? If so, here’s betting that they wouldn’t be fighting for the forced-treatment.

  • Chicago foie gras II

    Stephen Bainbridge and the Los Angeles Times (h/t W.F.) go into more detail on the Chicago ban we covered last week….