Dale Rice had blog post yesterday foreshadowing his Statesman article today about foie gras. I was the first to comment on the blog post, which was followed by the typical uninformed anti-foie gras blather. I tried to continue posting over there, but I can’t stand waiting for comments to appear and you can’t use HTML (thanks, Statesman).
This is a debate that’s already been going on around the country for the past year or so. Chefs Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman are at the forefront defending foie gras when a ban was threatened in NYC. There’s a Salon article from last year, a Ruhlman post on Megnut and several more on his own blog.
So now the debate is here (6-12 months behind the rest of the country as usual) and I have to deal with it.
I happen to not just like foie gras. I love it. I only get a chance to eat it once or twice a year, but it’s not for Noah Cooper and his cronies to decide whether or not I can have it. I’d like to know how many foie gras farms he’s personally visited? How many commercial poultry farms or commercial pork farms like Smithfield, which was profiled in Rolling Stone recently? Has he read Omnivore’s Dilemma? I have. It made me switch from eating commercially produced beef to trying to find grass-fed alternatives.
I made that choice. Am I on a campaign to get Austin restaurants to stop serving steak? No. So stay the hell away from my foie gras.