Foie Gras and Animal Cruelty Law

I guess anyone with my hair color should refrain from criticizing what's unnatural, but I hate force-feeding.  I hate torture in general.  The host of our View and Chew (Deguster, Visioner, et Parler) group send a couple of us a video on foie gras, something called Force-Fed to Death, which another person in our group--someone I adore--found "ridicule."  I still cant get sound on my online videos (though I can get sound on iTunes), so all I could do was watch, but that was more than enough.  Here's what I wrote:

Foie gras is gross, but there are even worst things that don’t get much attention, though that’s starting to change.  I’m glad there’s some “humane” way of doing the unnatural, as Jana has witnessed, but I suspect most foie gras procedures are like the one we see on this video, and that’s why—even though according to John Burton, Foie gras isn’t mentioned in the new law—restaurants that serve it are up in arms (as well as down in throats) about it:  They know that their method IS animal cruelty, and that’s what the law is all against.

                I became a vegetarian when I saw factory farming.  Until then I was very philosophical:  Everyone has to die.  Animals romped around happily until they landed on my plate.  But once I saw that there was no romping—not even the chance to turn around or turn their heads or suckle their young other than through iron sections of cages—I changed my philosophy.  The same year I became a vegetarian I became acquainted with a Beverly Hills woman whose husband had gotten rich through his meat business.  As we rode around in her chauffeured car (a first for me!) and lunched at her place at the Four Seasons Hotel, she said, “I know everything there is to know about how meat is processed, so I never eat it.” 

                Before I returned to Tonga in 2008, I thought I might eat pork because the pigs really do have a life before death.  They romp freely, cross roads, camp under discarded SUVs--the whole happy family together.  But once there, I simply found no need to eat meat.  There were plenty of other things to eat. 

                Oh, I just realized that I’m responding to the video Jana sent, not to the one you sent, Robert. 

                Now I’ve seen yours too.  The procedures look repellent in both.  But maybe what is said is pleasanter on the one Jana considers more balanced.

                Thank you both for your thoughts and for this forum.

And here’s the letter-to-the-editor from John Burton:  http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

I also sent the link for the pigs in Tonga: 

<https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+pigs+in+tonga&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=6rD8T8qaE4aTqQHz2ZWMCQ&ved=0CFYQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=864>