Relax, it's just foie gras

Whatever else you want to say about it, at least acknowledge this: Foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose, is truly, indisputably, delicious. Roasted whole, pan-seared, combined with brandy and turned into a pâté, the stuff just tastes good.

If you oppose foie gras, even if the only thing you've ever done about it is to make a dinner companion feel guilty, and you still eat conventionally raised meat, you're a raging hypocrite and a silly one at that.

The eggs you ate for breakfast, the cheese that came on top, and the bacon on the side, all of it is produced using methods more torturous than the ones employed on a good foie gras farm.

Animals on a typical farm these days are confined in spaces so small they can't turn around, much less do any of the things they'd normally do in nature. And in order to keep them at least somewhat healthy and functional despite those conditions, which tend to make them stressed and unhappy, their bodies are altered to keep them from harming themselves and their fellow animals -- chickens have their beaks trimmed, pigs and cows get their tails docked.

In his book, Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight, Mark Caro states that foi gras opposition is not, ultimately, about foie gras at all. They're being waged by vegans who believe that all meat eating inevitably involves torture but who are smart enough -- and disingenuous enough -- to focus on a product the average person might never eat, one that can easily be portrayed as a decadent luxury enjoyed only by fat cats who could not care less about animals.

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