Wednesday
March

16

2005
12:59 AM

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Wacky Reader, March 16, 2005 — If I'm going to take up bandwidth and hard drive space blabbing my opinions, then it's only reasonable to expect criticism. And this site has gotten its fair share. Mostly I just let it go and let it be part of the texture of the site. But today's feedback on yesterday's post by Debbie (e-mailed to me, not posted) is so nutty that I can't pass it by. And please note: for anyone who is a vegetarian, I respect you, and have no problem with you. I can even recommend a restaurant or two that will blow you away with their incredible vegetarian food. The exchange below is not about vegetarians and not eating meat. It's about this reader's hostility and inappropriate moral equivalency. OK. Enough caveats.

I received the following mail:

Regarding Jacques Pepin's comment "Most of the people against foie gras have never even been on a farm", followed by tastingmenu.com's "This great quote and more..."

One doesn't have to visit Auschwitz to have a good sense of how brutal the Holocaust was for the millions that died.

But I guess if we've been eating foie gras for years why should we change? We're under no obligation here to examine what is right and what is wrong in light of the other occupants of this planet. Animals are more like property than sentient beings, really. If we can dominate another species completely there's probably no reason why we shouldn't. Our needs, however bizarre and out of touch with reality on a global level, come first.

Jacques is off his freaking rocker. I read the Saute Wednesday piece with him rambling dementedly about tasteless organic tomatoes. Who cares, Jacques?

I hope the apocalypse wipes out the condescending elitist food snobs first. If there's any justice in the world it will be from avian flu.

M.Y. [I have withheld the writer's identity so their mailbox doesn't overflow.]

My response:

In fact, I think one does have to visit Auschwitz to get a sense of even a modicum of the brutality of the holocaust. And it's clear to me that by comparing the plight of ducks and geese to the genocide of 6 million people who shared my religion, culture, and in some cases DNA, you have definitely not visited Auschwitz. And ironically, the trip might do you in particular some good. Maybe afterwards you won't wish mass extermination on humanity as you do at the end of your note.

Setting your unbelievable insensitivity and ignorance aside, I don't know why you haven't written to me complaining about my love of meat. Have you seen how they treat cows? Chickens? Pigs? I have. If you're truly passionate about not treating animals like property then at least be consistent. I assume you don't own or use any leather products either. Do you eat fish? Eggs? Dairy products? If so then I would recommend you do two things:

1) Examine your value system and figure out why you've picked this issue to be outraged about when there are so many others of equal or greater importance to spend your time on.

2) Before dismissing Pepin's comments, please do go visit a farm. And not just a goose farm, but a variety of farms where they raise animals for food. (I have done this.) After that I again suggest you examine your value system and decide in what order to be outraged.

If after these exercises you get consistent with your passions and decide that all animal products are not for you, and stop comparing farming of animals to genocide, then I will disagree with you, but at least disagree respectfully. (I have no problem with vegetarians or anyone who doesn't want to use animal products for any reason. I do have a problem with people who make hostile and incoherent arguments.)

And if by some miracle, after all this you actually reverse your position and realize that the production of foie gras is no more inhumane than raising and milking dairy cows, and you suspend your outrage, I can recommend several restaurants where the foie gras is prepared exquisitely.

BTW, Hitler's sometime vegetarianism and love of animals (especially his dog) appears to be reasonably well-documented in respected books with no anti-vegetarian agenda that I could determine (1, 2). This feels like an ironic moral equation for you to weigh especially given your penchant for comparing Hitler's activities with those of farmers who haven't killed millions of people.

Now I feel better.