When a federal judge recently lifted the ban on the sale of foie gras in California, it sure kicked up a Fuss. To appreciate this Fuss, it’s necessary to understand some terminology:
(a) Foie Gras: fattened duck liver, sold whole or as a paste, mousse or other shmear. It’s considered a delicacy by foodies.
(b) Foodie: a term for the food-obsessed. Think Paula Deen, but slimmer and without racial slurs. In their passion to savor things most people won’t put in their mouths, foodies have been known to devour just about anything on the planet, even insects. They love foie gras. Those frail and living alone should never give a foodie their healthcare power of attorney.
It’s also necessary to understand some history: In 2012, California banned the production and sale of foie gras in response to animal activist complaints that its production amounted to animal cruelty – as in “torture.”
Foie gras production is sort of like agricultural waterboarding, using cornmeal instead of water. Specifically, ducks are force-fed by cramming a hose down their throat into their stomachs and pumping them full of food. Pain aside, over time this force-feeding plumps up the liver. It’s then extracted by humanely (but of course) killing the duck and slicing it open. The plump liver is sold to chic-chic restaurants, where foodies pay a fortune for the taste of torture.
If ducks were human, this practice – “gavage” as it is known – might be a war crime. Animal activists note that even our government – a world-renown torture practitioner — recoiled from using gavage on hunger-striking terrorist detainees, except when absolutely necessary to keep them alive… so they could be humanely tortured.
Even then, and as confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, when detainees went on hunger strikes the CIA had the decency to force-pump the food not down their throats, but up an alternate orifice. This technique is not used with ducks, however, possibly out of concern that it could impart undesirable notes to the foie gras.
At any rate, the legislature banned foie gras in California. This, of course, enraged foodies (rudely derided in animal rights circles as “gras-holes”). Out-of-state producers and a California restaurant group filed a suit resulting in the ruling by Judge Stephen V. Wilson, nixing the foie gras ban. Of course, it’s being appealed.
Which bring us to the present. As might be expected, animal lovers set social media afire over Judge Stephen’s decision. However, chefs at a few upscale area restaurants allowed themselves and their restaurants to be mentioned in the papers as praising it. We won’t repeat their names here; suffice it to say all of them vowed to return foie gras to their menus forthwith.
While this bravado will undoubtedly endear their restaurants to gras-holes everywhere, it could also attract boycotts, protests and demonstrations by animal lovers that could make a burned-out restaurant in Ferguson, Missouri look like a great place for lunch.
Already there are rumors — completely unconfirmed, of course — that activists are planning ‘denial of service’ attacks on restaurants serving foie gras. Not Sony-type cyber-hacks that shut down websites, steal data, expose erotic staff emails or start wars with North Korea. Rather, the type whereby, on a chosen date, activists using cellphones and reservation websites fill a restaurant’s entire book with reservations, and never show up. Of course, neither do paying customers who, because the place is completely booked, couldn’t get a table.
Apropos, this reservation-cramming technique is called “gavage.”
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