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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Chow / Books Reading Tonight: The Foie Gras Wars

Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 3:09 PM

As Mr. Constant mentioned earlier, Mark Caro, author of The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight, will be interviewed at the Pan Pacific Hotel this evening. The book does not take sides, choosing rather to present all available information on in a manner that may rightfully be described as exhaustive (and, arguably, exhausting: I'm on chapter two, and weighing how much time I have left on this planet versus how much is desirable to know about foie gras).

Mark Caro, John Sundstrom of Lark/foie gras fame, and the attorney for the Northwest Animal Rights Network—the group that's for months been picketing Lark and nearby Quinn's for serving foie gras—were all on KUOW this morning. Our article about the Lark/NARN contretemps is here, and here's this morning's radio show:

Tickets for tonight's 6:30 p.m. event are $45—expensive, but that includes a copy of the book, all the wine you can pour down your gullet, and appetizers prepared by Seastar. (Tickets should be available at the door; call Words & Wine at 632-2419 to confirm.) Foie gras will not be served, and NARN is not planning to attend.

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Photo courtesy of Cornichon.org.

Comments (12) RSS

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"Foie gras will not be served."
That Is So Wrong.

Posted by Allyn on July 14, 2009 at 3:22 PM

I wonder if, after all that research, he eats it...

Posted by Jude Fawley on July 14, 2009 at 3:23 PM

Does the book have recipes?

Posted by Allyn on July 14, 2009 at 3:26 PM

More meat porn!!!! YESssss...... Thank you Buffoony.

Posted by All Slog, All Meat, all the time on July 14, 2009 at 3:26 PM

@2
The entire purpose of this book was to get free Foie Gras under the premise of "research", I'm pretty sure.

Posted by vailripper on July 14, 2009 at 3:27 PM

foie gras. mmmmmmm.

Posted by slugbiker

on July 14, 2009 at 3:34 PM

5000 years.. yeah...

Posted by Beetlecat on July 14, 2009 at 3:49 PM

This book sounds like food-nerdery at its finest. I had an instructor in culinary school who was always assigning papers not so much on how to cook a certain food, but on why, where and for how long people have cooked and eaten certain foods.

Posted by playswithknives on July 14, 2009 at 4:10 PM

Shorter foie gras history:

Foie gras was eaten in ancient Egypt by holding geese and stuffing figs or grain down their throats until they died. It spread to the Romans, but it died off as it became a symbol of the cruelty of the ruling class. It survived in the separate Jewish community, but was condemned by Jewish scholars starting around 1100 AD for its remarkable cruelty. Foie gras has been formally banned in Israel.

Foie gras regained popularity in France (and in Hungary and Bulgaria, to a lesser extent) as a symbol of nationalism and became a "traditional" Christian food around Christmas-time. Foie gras has been formally banned (either production or sale or both) in all of Europe except for five countries in which a "grandfather clause" is in effect.

Foie gras spread to other countries that have close cultural contact to those three foie gras nationalists: Turkey (foie gras is now banned), Argentina (foie gras is now banned), the United States (foie gras is now banned in California), Canada (still legal due to Quebec's close ties to France), Australia (no longer produced there and almost nonexistent now due to effective boycotts), and recently China.

Why foie gras has been banned in almost every country throughout history where it has become common: http://liberationbc.org/issues/foie_gras

Posted by lizzie on July 14, 2009 at 4:51 PM

Heard the radio show and thought it was quite well done. And all sides represented themselves fairly well, although I thought I heard the NARN lawyer referencing veal as not as a bad as foie gras in terms of treatment and gotta disagree there. I'm not a foie gras proponent and thankfully my parents stopped eating it, however, the reality is that most of the meat that we purchase and eat at non-sourced places: the animals are force fed, maybe there aren't held, but they are consuming way more than their normal diet simply to fatten up and slaughtered faster than in the past for a meat raised animal. The book sounds interesting and the whole raising of legislation (discussed in the book) to ban foie gras seems less targeted at a specific business. But introducing legislation and sticking with it is less sexy and loud than being in a chicken suit. i get it.

Posted by stee on July 14, 2009 at 10:31 PM

I never would have thought to try Foie Gras until I heard of the stink caused by the animals rights extremists here. It's sooo good. I find the protest websites an excellent resource to find restaurants in my area that serve it.

Posted by Rob in Baltimore

on July 15, 2009 at 7:04 AM

@11, good to know, thanks. I listened to the program and went from being vaguely against foie gras to vaguely okay with it, providing it came from relatively humanely treated birds, as described by the author.

Posted by TwentySides on July 15, 2009 at 8:46 AM