From a Salon.com article, (you can read it here) Anthony Bourdain talking about Whole Foods. Interesting interview.
I love Whole Foods talking about lobster and clam cruelty, when people are being fucked to death, kidnapped, starved, bombed. [The grocery chain recently stopped selling some live shellfish on the grounds that the practice is inhumane.] There is so much cruelty to humans — so much cruelty to animals — in this world. And people are worried about a fucking mollusk. Unbelievable.
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I’ve heard from several sources over the past month, that the owners of Tabla will be opening a restaurant in the last vacant space at the Henry building, right behind Powells. Hard to beat that location, next to the almost finished Armory, in the middle of downtown, and plenty of underground parking at low rates. Can’t imagine what they are paying for rent!
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On June 30th, Rachel Ray’s visit to Portland will be broadcast on The Food Channel. To be honest, I can’t stand Rachel, but I’m going to set my Tivo to record it, just to see the last few days of Ripe before they closed. You can see it on, (brace yourself) Rachel Ray’s Tasty Travels, 9:30pm, Friday June 30. It will repeat 7/1 @12:30am. I can hardly contain my excitement.
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The New York Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni picks up on our earlier discussion of the decision by Whole Foods Markets not to carry live crab or lobster. He asks whether there is much difference between the killing of a lobster, or the force feeding of a goose for foie gras and the slow suffocation of a fish. From the article:
“When you think about treating animals in a humane way, it’s unlimited. If you start with the lobster, then next month you should think about the clam, and then you have to think about the fish, which is suffocating outside the water after we catch it.”
Even before it suffocates, a hooked or netted fish flails in a doomed effort to avoid its fate. The process is traumatic enough that David Pasternack, a fisherman and co-owner of the Manhattan seafood restaurant Esca, noted that “you can see the struggle in the flesh of a fish.”
If the fish hasn’t gone down quickly, he said, “The meat feels and looks stressed out.” Does that struggle deserve as much heed as the grisly realities of the abattoir?
It is an interesting article, and points out issues I have struggled with myself. You can read it by clicking here.
At 141 votes, the poll on Whole Foods new policy is pretty much a dead heat: 45% saying they are less likely to shop at WF, 43% saying it won’t make a difference. The trend hasn’t really changed much since the beginning, so we’ll cut it short and move on to a slightly different type of question: Have you personally ever killed and eaten an animal? I’m thinking something larger than a fish here. I think of us prefer our meat to come in nice little sanitary packages from the grocery store. I have friends that won’t eat anything that is served with the bone still on.
-s says
I know Rachael is pretty annoying, but her travel shows are better advertising for a city than any Chamber of Commerce could buy (especially Tasty Travels, in which she hits more places than $40 a Day.)
She is like a life-size Elmo though. Tee-hee!
singingpig says
I have butchered chickens. Really adds a lot of color to the back yard.
Apollo says
Hunting is fun… My dream is still to go on a Hemingway inspired African hunting safari. I enjoy being at the top of the food chain. Everything below us is fair game, and good eats…
cuisinebonnefemme says
It will be interesting to see how many people try to make reservations at Ripe after the programs airs. Ripe should probably update their website. It looks like they haven’t made any announcements or changes to either the Family Supper or the Tavern web pages. That is bad bad bad marketing.
Erin says
I’ve killed chickens, guniea hens and rabbits; strange thing, the killing was way less stressful (for me!) than the cleaning and prepping of the carcasses. I grew up rurally where neighbors harvested hogs and cows each year to stock the freezer/smokehouse. Seems normal enough, but I don’t know how I’d take to it now… I’m sure I’d be a bit squeamish, but I’d also feel like a complete hypocrite if I couldn’t do it. I’d have to become a vegetarian or something.
Pork Cop says
I tend to like the killing more than the eating.Thats just the way I was raised.
pollo elastico says
I could probably eat a baby river otter as long as I didn’t have to gut and clean it and it was presented in filet form with a demi-glace.
greenink says
It’s not the killing that is cruel. Things die so that others can live. That’s the way nature works. The cruelty lies in how creatures are treated while they are living, and that’s what Whole Foods is responding to. Equate it to beef cattle being kept in appalling feedlot conditions.
Killing for sport is just wrong, and people who do it should be hunted by large predators on small islands.
Apollo says
Save the whales!!!! Eat a dolphin…
Apollo says
Honestly though, I really could care less what the animal goes through. It exists for my gastronomic pleasure. A foie gras duck was bred and raised for a single purpose: getting fat and then being eaten. So they get force fed, big deal. It’s a freaking duck that is going to be killed anyway. They don’t have a gag reflex for a reason.
pascal says
Everything that run slower than me, I catch it, kill it and eat it.
Don’t worry…I don’t run very fast…
Pearl says
The thing that bothers me about the Peta foie to-do and the whole foods not carrying lobster is that the only reason that these particular foods are being targeted and people are rallying behind it is because they are considered luxury items. The average Joe has never even tried fois gras and wouldn\’t want to. So, nevermind what horrific conditions that conventionally raised chickens live and die in, let\’s bycott foie gras. The general public will cry out in protest about force-feeding ducks but they aren\’t giving up their hamburgers.
Pearl says
Oh no, I just re-read my rant and realized that I spelled foie gras incorrectly. Oops, to make such a mistake on my first posting. You guys are going to mock me and I will be afraid to post again.
Chambolle says
I am now mocking you. Mercilessly.
mczlaw says
Low hanging fruit. . .my comment to posts 12 & 14.
–mcz
singingpig says
Pascal,
You just explained escargot and frogs legs.
It doesn’t take much “force” to get a duck or a goose to gorge itself on corn. Never forget that, as Carl and Lenny astutely pointed out, Homer Simpson eats like a duck.
In the past, when you wanted to fatten a goose for a family celebration, you would nail their feet to a board and keep corn and water in front of them. They would just stand there and eat and poop and eat and sleep and eat some more,
Pork Cop says
I heard that Cheney and Rove did that to W. one time with pretzels. We all know the result.