Word: ducking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Most people in America have never heard of, let alone eaten, foie gras. To those who've feasted on fatty duck liver, it's the ultimate indulgence in taste and texture. But even fans of the delicacy can't help but think about how it came to be. To make foie gras, farmers force-feed their fowl via a metal tube inserted in the ducks' throats. Chicago Tribune entertainment reporter Mark Caro was thrust into this very dicey corner of haute cuisine when he wrote a 2005 story about a famous Chi-Town chef's sudden ban on foie gras...
...upstate New York to France, interviewed the dedicated (and often aggressive) animal activists who are trying to shut down the industry and, along the way, confronted his own food demons. Caro, author of a new book about the debate, The Foie Gras Wars, talked to TIME about why Donald Duck is a force to be reckoned with, the true goals of the animal rights camp and why he won't be craving foie gras any time soon. (See TIME's Summer Journey: We Are What...
...think of ducks having personalities. You've got Donald Duck. You've got Daffy Duck. You've got the Aflac duck. We think they're spunky little animals and we like them. And the method to produce foie gras is vivid and sounds incredibly unpleasant. Imagine if somebody put a pipe down your throat and filled you up with food. You would be gagging, falling over. But ducks actually breathe through the center of their tongue. They're not gagging and being prevented from breathing. In fact, they store fat in their liver, which is unlike us. But it sounds...
...duck, so I can't really say how it feels, but the process itself is not a sadistic torturous process. When you look at the ducks that have just been fed and the ones about to be fed, there is not a perceptible difference between them. The counter-argument is that ducks are prey animals and are conditioned not to show you if they're suffering. And if you've got a liver that's 10 times its normal size, a duck is going to be uncomfortable. But a duck being uncomfortable in the last days before it's slaughtered...
...cleanliness and its methods of preparation. "For the last five years we've been sending food off every month for sampling, and I don't know any other restaurant in the country that does that," he told Hospitality. Apparently his customers believe him: a week after reopening, The Fat Duck is once again fully booked...