Foie Gras soon to be Foie Gone

Well, it seems that the debate over Foie Gras has gone beyond the forum at eGullet, and into Chicago's famed City Hall. The flap started when famed Chicago Chef Charlie Trotter announce that he would no longer serve foie gras, the rich, fatted liver of a duck, in his restaurants. Then Rick Tramonto weighed in, starting a rather public and at times vicious debate over whether the practice of fattening the ducks to make foie gras constitutes cruelty to anuimals. I won't go into it here, but you can learn all about the raising of foie gras as well as the debate here.

Well, it seems that when a Public official gets a whiff of the publicity that surrounds such a public debate, he always wants to jump in. Now Chicago Alderman Joe Moore has introduced a measure to ban the use and sale of foie gras in the city.

"Moore said he wasn't sure if he had ever eaten foie gras.

Of the seven aldermen who showed up Tuesday for the hearing before the Committee on Health, three said they were certain they had never eaten it."

Apparently, many had to be explained what it is.

Whatever your stance on foie gras, it seems to me that the choice to eat it, as with anything, is an individual one. The arguments that the way in which it is raised is cruel to the animal just don't seem to wash with me. If we are raising animals to kill them and eat their flesh, yet, we're concerned that force feeding them is cruel, it just seems a little off-kilter to me. If you were really concerned about the animals, you wouldn't be eating them at all.

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