Tuesday, December 23, 2014

PETA Protests Foie La La Outside Boundary Road

A group of H Street restaurants teamed up to participate in the second year of a multi-day friendly competition to create the best dish based around a single ingredient...foie gras. Needless to say, this did not sit well with everyone. The competition is titled Foie La La. Last year seven restaurants participated, but this year started out with nine competitors before dropping down to eight (Micho's withdrew from the event a few days ago). The hash tag #FoieLaLa began appearing in tweets criticizing the event as well as those publicizing and expressing excitement about it. PETA got involved with a protest involving participants dressed as waiters serving up bloodied ducks on platters in front of Boundary Road (chef and owner Brad Walker came up with the idea for Foie La La).

Here are a couple of articles discussing the controversy (the Washingtonian piece contains an open letter from Brad Walker):
Roll Call: Liver Let Die
Washingtonian: Bloodied Waiters Will Protest H Street’s “Foie La La” Foie Gras Competition

15 comments:

Andrew said...

Good job PETA! Screw boundary rd

Bizarro-Andrew said...

Good Job Boundary Road!

Anonymous said...

Google "PetaKillsAnimals"

Google "Huffington Post PETA's Secret Slaughter of Kittens, Puppies"

Anonymous said...

Doesn't anyone care about the rights of hipsters and the rich to eat food that tastes like vomit?

Anonymous said...

This just encourages me to dine at as many of the Foie La La la restaurants as possible. They are free to serve what they want (just as these activists are free to complain as much as they want). Sorry but this protest just sold more foie gras - a lot more, to me. :)

Anonymous said...

Thx to PETA for bringing attention to this issue. I wasn't familiar with foie gra but will be sure not to try it and will not be visiting the restaurants that promoted this.

Anonymous said...

People should protest for
Housing, Wages, Health Care.....

Not fucking ducks !

heyktb said...

The way in which foie gras is made is pretty brutal. If people were simply AWARE of the process, perhaps fewer individuals would see it as a delicacy. Those people who commented that they would eat more because of the protests might want to watch how the liver is enlarged and harvested. It's pretty disgusting. At the very least, your appetite will diminish. If not, perhaps you might need to recheck your compassion meter. It is easy to just ignore these issues because they are unpleasant or because other issues might seem more immediate or more compelling. So kudos to the protestors for taking the time to bring this unnecessary and cruel practice to our attention.

JoshNE said...

I am fully aware of the process of making foie gras. Foie produced by Hudson Valley (the farm that provides the product for Boundary Road and many other East coast restaurants) is done in a way that I am comfortable with. Some people look at the way foie is made (and has been made for a very, very long time), and are able to recognize that ducks and geese are not humans, and have unique nervous and gastrointestinal systems.

I am much more concerned with the way commodity chicken, pork, and beef is produced, but we don't see PETA protesting in front of Giant or Safeway.

As for the liver being harvested, yes, I agree that more people should see that, if only because more people should be aware of where the shrink-wrapped meat they buy in the grocery store comes from. If we had more connection to our food, perhaps we'd see a push to improve the lot of your standard pig or Purdue chicken.

heyktb said...

joshNE, I totally agree that people should be aware of how and where ALL of their meat and animal products are produced.
birds, although not often seen as warm and fuzzy like most mammals, do have an extremely well developed sensory/nervous system and do most definitely feel the same pain experienced by mammals.
Wouldn't it be pretty swell to picket ALL suppliers of meat that was not grown and harvested by the practices supported by certifiedhumane.org
sadly, these retailers represent SO many outlets that perhaps the protesters saw an opportunity t o bring to our attention just one egregious example of an unnecessary meat option. I am not sure why people are mad at the protestors. they were simply educating the public about what they were about to consume. oh, THATS the problem. people just don't want to know. ignorance is bliss.

Anonymous said...

I appreciate Brad's thoughtful letter and that some of these restaurants use better meat suppliers than most. That said, force-feeding birds to disease their livers strikes me as necessarily cruel in a way that creating other meats isn't. Reading up has convinced me that foie gras isn't something I can support. Of course Boundary Road and the others are free to continue this, but there are plenty of restaurants in the neighborhood that don't participate, so I'll just go to those instead.

Anonymous said...

Those bloody ducks look delicious too tho.

Anonymous said...

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/12/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-gras-is-not-u.html

Anonymous said...

Are we supposed to care about ducks now? I don't care about ducks. I also do not care about geese, because they are assholes.

Anonymous said...

Ducks Lives Matter!