Last week, the Howard County Times wrote an article about how restaurateur Michel Tersiguel pulled foie gras from his menu. This dish was pulled in response to the threat of a protest from an animal rights group. Foie gras, as you may know, is a fancy-pants dish produced by force feeding ducks or geese to make their livers expand to ten time their normal size.
This week, there is a letter in the paper in response to this article that has missed the point of what happened. This letter argued that the marketplace should decide what foods are acceptable. I agree so far. The letter went on to gripe about how the restaurant owner was “forced” to pull foie gras from his menu, not the laws of supply and demand, but by protesters. This is where I strongly disagree. There was no private or government force that caused Tersiguel to pull foie gras from his menu. No laws were passed and no militants with guns forced the menu to be altered. Two private parties came together to reach an agreement, the end result of the agreement being that foie gras will take the midnight train off the menu. The 15 animal rights activists are peons to Mr. Tersiguel, they can’t force him to do anything. It is the unpleasant information about foie gras production that will be unsettling to the paying customers of the restaurant that affect the restaurant’s bottom line that drove the decision. Thus, the economics of public aversion to animal cruelty drove this decision, not force.
I suppose next week we will see a letter to the editor complaining that citizen activists “forced” GGP to bring the poinsettia tree back for 2008.
5 comments:
I disagree. It was not the economics of public aversion to animal cruelty which drove this decision.
It was the aversion of 15 animal rights activists which drove this decision.
The study of economics and the study of society may and often do interrelate, but they are different forces.
Should no one have purchased Foie gros, if given the choice, that would have been an economic decision.
Jim Adams
So why are chicken and beef still on the menu? I assume the animal rights activists also think that eating other forms of meat is just as bad as foie gras. Can’t the animal rights activists just as easily “force” Big T to stop serving chicken and beef as well?
Take the 15 activists out of the equation, and I suspect Foie gras would still be on the menu.
It sounds as if the activists were not peons, but individuals, who presented to Mr. Tersiguel an argument that he found valid.
Where is the economics, where is the free market making the decision. The customers who may want this item, even after knowing all the "unpleasant information", were left out of the decision process.
Another point, where these 15 individuals, animal rights activits, or were they people who just don't like liver. This could explain why they didn't disagree with chicken and beef on the menu. Cattle and chicken lead the same horrible lives as over stuffed fowl, and never have the opportunity to live out their lives to full maturity.
I am a little suspecious of the term "animal rights activists".
One more point. "Big T", is this a nick name that Mr. Tersiguel knows and loves? This makes me a little suspecious as well.
As strange as all of this sounds, It is making me hungry, Time for breakfeast, my favorite meal. A bowl of oats, blueberries and a curl or two of honey, on my oats and in my tea. Hold the liver please.
jim adams
“Where is the economics, where is the free market making the decision? The customers who may want this item, even after knowing all the "unpleasant information", were left out of the decision process.”
I think I made it clear what I think about the first sentence in the actual post, and the customers who want foie gras are outnumbered (not left out) by the customers who will go the Jordan’s Steakhouse or Coco Lane rather than to Big T’s restaurant if foie gras is served. I guess we will just have to disagree. Big T is a name I devised because I am a lazy speller.
F.M. lets give each other an early Christmas Gift.
Let's agree that we disagree and move on.
I misspell because I do a very poor job of proof reading, I am too intent on the substance and not enough on the words.
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