Ethical eating

Since I wrote in The Spectator a fortnight ago about the ‘Say no to foie gras’ campaign, my email has been flooded with protests. Animal-rights groups have claimed that I am wet, limp, cravenly judicious; I should have said that force-fed geese are a symbol of the evil Man everywhere does to animals. Partisans of foie gras accuse me of being a ‘vego-fascist’; more interestingly, several of my Sybarite correspondents have observed that the European legislation banning force-feeding is really a kind of class warfare waged against a delicacy enjoyed mostly by the well-to-do. And my friend Paul Levy, Britain’s most knowledgeable foodie, says I’ve got the facts wrong: artisan producers do not abuse their birds; in caring human hands both geese and ducks voluntarily submit to the gavage (massage of food down the gullet) since they are programmed to overeat before the migratory season.

One thing these clamouring correspondents seem to share lies in that word ‘artisanal’.