Results tagged “animal rights” from Birmingham Mail - Restaurant Spy

The chef at one of Birmingham's best known restaurants tells me that he's taken foie gras off the menu - not because of the animal rights protests taking place, but simply because it wasn't selling well. Perhaps the activists are winning the propaganda war.

But how long, I wonder, before it disappears from menus to be sold under the counter - a bit like booze in the United States' sorry and misguided Prohibition era?

I can't help thinking there would be an added excitement if a waiter furtively whispered: "Wanna score some of our special pate, man?"

Perhaps the animal rights campaigners should worry that forbidden pleasures are often considered the best.

Foie gras, a current target for the animal rights movement, is much admired by gourmets. Small wonder for it's rich, creamy and gloriously flavoured.

But the force-feeding of geese and ducks to produce the enlarged livers that are foie gras is a nasty and brutal business. It's impossible to argue otherwise.

A small, inoffensive and not very noisy demonstration by a group opposed to the production and consumption of foie gras took place outside the restraurant at which I was eating yesterday evening. I admire that they were willing to give up their Friday night when most of the rest of Birmingham was unwinding with a beer or glass of wine.