Dirty Nails, Dirty Wheels

A short segment on California’s upcoming foie gras ban.

From a chef: “It’s unfortunate for, for the consumer, to have it taken away.”

Is that what’s unfortunate?

From a restaurant patron, frustrated over perceived undue focus on foie gras: “I feel like people should be looking at other practices in how animals are treated. I mean, look at some of the larger farms where these animals don’t have room to move, or they’re not taken care of and they’re not healthy, and people are getting sick. You don’t hear about people getting sick from foie gras.”

People are “looking at” other animal rights abuses. You may not be, but people who haven’t crushed crucial sides of their own compassion are. Too, using the fact that other animals are “not taken care of and they’re not healthy” as reasons we should focus on other animal rights abuses instead of foie gras production is nonsensical: what part of force-feeding a duck or goose until their liver swells suggests “taken care of” or “healthy?” Further, the reason we fight is not so that omnivores will stop getting sick from eating cow shit mixed into the dead bodies they call food, but to defend and liberate the non-human animals that humankind enslaves, tortures, rapes and murders because some of us think their bodies and the things that come out of them taste good or look nice.