United Poultry Concerns
March 12, 2008

Letters Protest "A Defense of Foie Gras"

An article in the Baltimore City Paper on Feb. 27 defended foie gras production and consumption (http://www.citypaper.com/eat/story.asp?id=15342). In this week's City Paper (March 12), UPC president Karen Davis and veterinarian Holly Cheever, a UPC Advisory Board member, respond. You can read these letters along with two other great letters (by Lynda Cozart and Deborah Healy) by clicking on this link:
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=15439

UPC President Karen Davis wrote:

In "Live and Let Liver" (Feb. 27), Henry Hong falsely compares the experience of force feeding forcibly confined ducks and geese to enlarge their livers for human consumption with wild birds' consumption of extra-large quantities of food to prepare themselves for a long migration. However, in the case of a long migration, the food is converted to energy, whereas force-fed birds with restricted movement do not turn the food into energy but into sickly fat - a disease condition known medically as hepatic lipidosis.

Faced with bad publicity, Hudson Valley Foie Gras, in upstate New York, began staging pre-arranged tours in 2004 - hiding and culling visibly sick birds, throwing down fresh sawdust, and so on, to feed willing visitors' fantasies of humane treatment in conformity with false advertising.

Regardless, force feeding an animal, not for medicinal purposes, but to please a palate, does not meet ethical standards, while to invoke the cruelty inflicted on chickens in order to deflect attention from the cruelty inflicted on waterfowl to produce foie gras is rather like comparing a rape to, say, a beating - which is worse?

For seven years, we have had two male ducks rescued from Hudson Valley at our sanctuary on the Virginia Eastern Shore. They are now very different birds from their former selves, and while they now are friendly, talkative, lively and active, and spend happy hours splashing in their pool and padding about the yard, they do not want to be touched by human hands.

As for Mr. Hong's claim of "extensive inquiry" into the treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food, well, maybe here, too, in my opinion, his standards are flexible.

Karen Davis
President, United Poultry Concerns
Machipongo, Va.