Foie gras, veal, astrakhan, and other extreme ways to hurt animals for your dining or fashion pleasure

Animals can be tasty, and their skins can be useful, but we don't have to be cruel and/or inhumane if and when we do take their lives and their bodies for our use.

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Foie gras:
Liver of fatted goose.
Generally created by force-feeding geese.

See this recent Christian Science Monitor article on a foie gras ban proposed in Chicago.

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Veal:
Meat of extremely young calves - ~16 weeks or younger.
Often produced by taking the calves away from their mothers when they are just a day or two old, feeding them a milk-like formula instead of their mothers' milk and then solid food, and confining them to tiny areas in which they can't move around. This is called "white veal" or "milk-fed veal". Nope, you were wrong! "Milk-fed" is *not* when the calf drinks its mother's milk!

See the HSUS' veal fact sheet for details.

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Astrakhan, aka. Karakul:
Skin of newborn or even fetal "Persian lamb".
Soft and curly fur; used for coats and other garments. Warm; soft; drapes well. The Mistress' mother had Persian lamb coats twenty-some years ago, and the Mistress always loved the way the coats felt. She only found out what these were really made of this year, 2005.

See the HSUS' article 'Astrakhan: Hot "New" Fashion is the Same Old Cruelty'
The earlier, the curlier. Yuck! The veal of furs.

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No, the Mistress is not a vegetarian. She likes steak a bit much to make that leap.

See the HSUS' article on humane slaughter.


Foie gras: geese are pretty stupid, but it still sounds nasty to force-feed animals so we can kill them to better enjoy eating specific organs.

Veal: the calves should have their mommies, and they should be allowed exercise. Period. If you must eat veal but are trying to be humane about it, ask for "pink veal". Reject "white" or "milk-fed" or "formula-fed". Cows may not be very smart, but they know enough to get upset when they are forcibly separated from their moms/calves.

Astrakhan, aka. Karakul: double ditto veal. Their origin is such a shame. Let's have some faux Persian lamb coats! Appreciate the look and feel without killing the lambs!

Suckling pig: not mentioned at top, but the Mistress avoids this and other fetal/newborn dishes like the Plague. The Mistress gets creeped out of late when rinsing (supermarket-purchased) chickens or small turkeys for roasting. Maybe now you will too.


Why?

Extrapolate. People crated from birth and force-fed liquid diets (or high-fat foods) would be awfully tasty to someone... or our skins would be extra-soft and appealing... This is *gross* - to us. Imagine if there were some animal on Earth that likes to eat people, or that likes to use our skins to decorate themselves - that's not as far out. This may seem absurd since we don't have alien overlords or billions of baby-eating, farming-minded lions on the prowl, but just do the gedanken. Stew on it for sixty seconds.

We're lucky to be at the top of the food chain. Very lucky.