Less Cruelty, More Flavor?
Corie Brown of the LA Times reports on the decision of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck to “fight animal cruelty:”
If the plan is carried out as promised, it means no foie gras — fatty liver produced by overfeeding ducks and geese — would be served at Spago or any of Puck’s 14 other fine-dining restaurants. Spago’s famous weiner schnitzel would be made exclusively using veal from roaming, not shackled, calves. Eggs to make souffles and custards would come only from hens that have lived cage-free. And lobsters for Chinois’ renowned Shanghai lobster would be removed from their ocean traps quickly to arrive at his restaurant without spending time in overcrowded holding tanks.
…
The announcement comes after three years of protests by Farm Sanctuary, an animal-rights group that launched wolfgangpuckcruelty.org — a website that was taken down last summer — and organized a leafletting campaign in front of Puck’s restaurants. Yet Puck said he isn’t responding to pressure from the group, or from sympathetic lawmakers in California and elsewhere. Rather, he said, he believes that the best-tasting food comes from animals that have been treated humanely.
It reminds me of the story of Polyface Farms in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The proprietor of Polyface, Joel Salatin, runs a farm in Virginia that makes today’s high-volume organic food factories look about as environmentally sustainable as Exxon Mobil. (And Whole Foods knows it!) As Omnivore author Michael Pollan tells the story, Salatin uses 21st century science, a bricolage of farm implements and a passion for growing things right to create products so much better than the norm that the chefs at local restaurants in Charlottesville can tell the difference as soon as they crack open an egg.
The Omivore’s Dilemma is a great book by one of my favorite authors. The story of Polyface Farms is only one reason to read it. Among many, many other things, you’ll never think about farm subsidies the same again…
