After California appallingly gave in to the most petty kind of political cheapshotism by outlawing the farming and selling of foie gras, New Jersey is looking to attack artisanal farmers and pass similar anti-French legislation.

Thankfully, celebrity chefs are speaking out against the right-wing fascists: Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlmann laid it out for Salon today.

www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/10/05/ruhlman_bourdain_foie/

“This reeks on so many levels. Along with other wrong-headed, easy-fix, knee-jerk reactions to perceived food scares,”

It’s just another anti-French, anti-choice piece of legislation that is grossly misdirected. The farms in the US they are shutting down with this legislation are some of the most humane ones in the country.

Ironically, those in favor of the resolution have resorted to acts of terrorism against humans.

This is how the chefs describe the situation:

“Cruelly raised foie gras — the poor animals you see in the videos in tiny pens with tubes being, as they always say, “shoved down their throats” — is bad foie gras. None of us would buy that stuff. That’s not what we want, and that’s not what D’Artagnan sells. In proper foie gras farming, the same feeder tends the duck every day, and more often than not, it’s the duck who approaches the feeder. They have room to run around, to live a good, natural life — even a pampered one — compared with the horrifying and vastly more widespread practice of raising battery chickens.”

I think even the looniest anthropomorphist would agree with that.

Please contact the NJ legislators by clicking on their names below and urge them to Free the Foie and vote against the bill.

Bill Sponsors:

Assemblywoman Joan Voss
Assemblyman Thomas Giblin
Assemblyman Michael Panter

Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee:

Assemblyman Douglas Fisher - Chair
Assemblyman Nelson Albano - Vice-Chair
Assemblyman Herb Conaway
Assemblyman Ronald Dancer
Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow

E-mail by clicking the link next to “Electronic Mail.” (Thanks to superchefblog for putting in the legwork on the legislator links)

• Festivus Gastronomicus Rating: Crapicus

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 1:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.