Foie Gras - One of Man's Most Cruel Ways of Eating

"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead." ~Woody Allen

Guess Woody Allen should have added this word too - tortured.

This is an image of Foie Gras... Literally meaning, 'Fat liver". I'm not a very strict and dogmatic vegetarian, but even my few non-vegetarian friends will agree that this is just too gross. Well, it's not the taste I'm talking about [it's supposed to be a delicacy]... Because that would be a retarded thing to do in a blog that's more or less dedicated to making a difference. Nope, I'm talking about this:

... And my dear friends, that's the picture that was least disturbing. Well, the fact of the matter is, Foie Gras is prepared by, as PETA.org puts it,

For 12 to 21 days, ducks and geese are subjected to gavage—every day, up to 4 pounds of grain and fat are forced down the birds’ throats by means of an auger in a feeding tube.(9,10) The Washington Post reported that the tube “is pushed 5 inches down their throats, and more food than they want is gunned into their stomachs. If the mushy corn sticks … a stick is sometimes used to force it down.”(11) The birds’ livers, which become engorged from a carbohydrate-rich diet, can grow to be more than 10 times their normal size (a disease called “hepatic steatosis”).

There are other stuffs that are said to happen to these ducks and geese as a result of this 'force-feeding' and I'm not gonna put that here, because frankly speaking... it's just too disturbing to talk about. You can check out more about this in http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-for-Food/the-pain-behind-foie-gras.aspx 

If you want to do something about it, http://action.petaindia.com/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=111&ea.campaign.id=10463 Sign this petition, and hopefully something will change. About 16 countries in the world have actually banned it.

The most common argument about this is that animals are tortured everyday for other purposes such as medicine, research, etc. But there's a difference between doing that for a constructive purpose like research and doing that for the sake of pleasure. Most non-vegetarian food involves just killing and cooking, so it's not that much of a problem. But this... heavens... It makes me wonder about the cruelty of human beings. No other carnivore or omnivore in the world would cause so much pain to another species.