LOBSTERS
Lobsters look very different from humans, so it's hard for us to imagine how they perceive the world. For example, lobsters "smell" chemicals in the water with their antennae, and they "taste" with sensory hairs along their legs. But in many ways, lobsters aren't so different from us.
Like humans, lobsters have a long childhood and an awkward adolescence. Just like us they also carry their young for nine months and can live to be more than 100 years old.
Like dolphins and many other animals, lobsters use complicated signals to explore their surroundings and establish social relationships. They take long-distance seasonal journeys and can cover 100 miles or more each year (the equivalent of a human walking fromMaine to Florida United States
Like dolphins and many other animals, lobsters use complicated signals to explore their surroundings and establish social relationships. They take long-distance seasonal journeys and can cover 100 miles or more each year (the equivalent of a human walking from
Contrary to claims made by seafood sellers, scientists have determined that lobsters, like all animals, can feel pain. Also, when kept in tanks, they may suffer from stress associated with confinement, low oxygen levels, and crowding. Most scientists agree that a lobster's nervous system is quite sophisticated. Neurobiologist Tom Abrams says lobsters have "a full array of senses."
Lobsters may feel even more pain than we would in similar situations. According to invertebrate zoologist Jaren G. Horsley, "The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut. ... I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open ... [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed" during cooking.
http://www.peta.org
Quail
They are sold in luxury stores and appear on the menus of top restaurants, with customers assured that the birds are reared on specialist farms with the highest welfare standards.
But the gourmet packaging in which thousands of quail are shipped each week belies the cramped and grubby conditions in which many birds are kept, according to investigators working for the League Against Cruel Sports.
Footage recorded in the poultry farms of Britain's biggest quail and quail egg producer, Fayre Game, and seen by the Guardian, shows hundreds of birds packed in filthy, multi-level wire cages in dim lighting. Many have virtually no feathers left on their bodies. Dead birds lie among living and dying birds, with eggs falling on to trays below. Mesh netting alongside is encrusted with dirt and feathers.
The revelations have caused such concern at Harrods and Selfridges that they have taken quail and quail eggs from the Lancashire company off their shelves.
Fayre Game, which produces pheasants, partridges, guinea fowl, quail and other game birds as well as exotic meats including ostrich, can produce as many as 65,000 quail and 150,000 quail eggs every week. The company says it supplies UK supermarkets and food halls as well as large wholesale markets such as London's Smithfield, which in turn supplies the catering industry, including many top restaurants. Quail eggs are a particular delicacy for canapes and sell well in the run-up to Christmas.
Mike Haines, commercial director of Fayre Game, said last night that the League Against Cruel Sports had not approached him directly over the allegations. "I don't know if the footage is of our farm or not," he said. "I haven't seen any film. The League Against Cruel Sports has not shown anything to me."
Segregation
He confirmed that about 20% of Fayre Game's quail production was in battery conditions, with birds segregated for genetic reasons and when the sexes were separated. "That proportion has been gradually reducing as we have put more birds outside," he said.
Any dead birds would routinely be removed, he said. Feathers came off when breeding birds had been mating. He could not, however, explain the dirty conditions: "We maintain the highest welfare standards." The birds were on wire netting "so they are not treading in their faeces" and to allow eggs to roll through to the front of the cage. If they were agitated, it was because they were wild birds which were not used to being disturbed by people.
Although quail is not hunted for sport in the UK, it remains a popular game meat and is often sold alongside pheasant, partridge and other shot game birds throughout the shooting season. Like other game birds, quail are marketed as wild, natural and ethically produced, although they are killed in slaughterhouses rather than being shot.
Fayre Game is owned by the Lancashire-based Tom Barron group, which also operates in the poultry, dairy and organic food sectors.
The claims are made by the League Against Cruel Sports in a report, The Great Game Hoax, due to be published next month. Cerys Roberts of the League said: "'Our investigations have revealed the shocking mistreatment of battery reared quail. The League has also found incidents of pheasants and partridges subjected to similar abuse and will be naming the companies involved in the New Year.
"Any supermarket or store stocking these products should remove them immediately. Shoppers are increasingly refusing to buy battery chickens and will be distressed to discover that gamebirds, heavily marketed as an organic, natural food are often anything but."
The investigation has also uncovered a complex supply chain, where it is difficult to find out exactly who supplied products to which outlets. It reveals that the British shooting industry has become heavily dependent upon imports of eggs and chicks from countries such as France, in order to meet growing demand for game.
Rebranding
In recent years game meat has been rebranded as an ethical and healthy food and is likely to feature in many family meals over the festive season. It has attracted numerous celebrity endorsements from chefs such as Jamie Oliver and the Guardian's own food writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. The Countryside Alliance started its Game-to-Eat campaign in 2002, and now claims to be one of the main factors driving the 133% increase in game sales in recent years.
The report says: "Although there is no evidence any of the retailers identified as selling Fayre Game products are aware of the appalling conditions inside one of its farms, consumers will demand that such practices are immediately investigated and stamped out."
Waitrose said in a statement: "We have not sold any birds from Fayre Game since March 2005. All Waitrose game is from a small number of carefully selected shoots on British country estates."
But Harrods and Selfridges said they had stopped supplies from the company as a result of the revelations. Harrods said it had stopped selling the products (boneless quail and eggs) last Tuesday and that it would launch an investigation: "This has come at a difficult time of year because of the Christmas season. We have suspended all orders. We also sell quail eggs from another supplier (the Cornwall-based specialist free range egg producer) Clarence Court, so will continue to offer those."
Selfridges said: "We are grateful that these revelations were brought to our attention and we are happy to confirm that we have stopped stocking Fayre Game products. We will be stocking eggs from Clarence Court."
Haines said Fayre Game took animal welfare "extremely seriously". It was working towards gaining formal recognition through RSPCA's farm assurance and food labelling scheme, Freedom Food.
CAVIAR
The Guinness Book awards the Caspian Sea the record of World’s Largest Lake. Nourished by more than one hundred Russian, Kazakhstani, Turkmen, Azerbaijani, and Iranian rivers, the Caspian Sea is also Nature’s ideal petri dish for breeding sturgeon. Five species stalk the Caspian sediment: Beluga (giant or great sturgeon), Russian (which produces osetra caviar), Stellate (sevruga caviar), Ship, and Persian. Indeed, even caviar’s linguistic roots can be angled from the Persian word “khav-yar”, meaning “cake of strength.” The Caspian was once so chock-full of sturgeon that annual hauls from the late 19th and early 20th centuries regularly tipped the scales at over twenty thousand tons, and billions of rubles, seemingly enough to satiate every gourmand’s appetite for a lifetime. But when someone discovered that the Caspian could be tapped (and barreled) for another ‘black gold’, the thankless economics of supply and demand would deal the sturgeon an all-too-familiar blow.
“The roe of the Russian mother sturgeon has probably been present at more important international affairs than have all the Russian dignitaries of history combined.”
- James Beard
Like the Americans before them, the Soviet Russians (and now the post-Soviets and Iranians) have learned a poignant lesson in supply-side economics. Over the past two decades, an array of mangled industrial and commercial decisions have decimated ninety percent of the beluga sturgeon fleet. Damaging activities include the contamination of Caspian waters from an invasive cocktail of refined petroleum by-products mixed with sewage and fertilizer runoff; the damming of the Caspian’s primary tributary, the Volga River, which blocks eighty-five percent of the beluga’s upstream spawning grounds; and, perhaps most sinister, the unchecked explosion in the quarter billion dollar black market trade in caviar that outstrips legal exports ten to one. Russian officials estimate that in 1995, poachers gutted practically every sturgeon unlucky enough to migrate to the Volga. The environment has become so unbalanced that legitimate Russian fisherman can no longer find enough fish to meet their sanctioned quotas. Thankfully, recent efforts have begun to blow a fresh whiff of hope to help ease the stench of the past.
1998 marked the first good news a sturgeon ever heard when the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) recognized all Caspian Sea sturgeon species as internationally protected resources, requiring every export to have an identification permit detailing the grade, country of origin, and the year of catch. Under the CITES umbrella, customs agents at New York’s JFK airport seize illegal imports on a weekly basis - over thirty one thousand pounds of caviar since 1998. Despite efforts like these to curtail smuggling, demand for caviar continues to rise off the charts (wealthy populations in the EU, Switzerland, Japan, and the US account for ninety-five percent of the multi-million dollar market), and the nets thrown out by the export police contain many loopholes. So, using CITES as a platform, a new campaign is being waged to save the sturgeon – this time, targeting the consumer.
“Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Textbook economics dictates that supply will increase to meet heightened demand, and when it can’t, price skyrockets. In the beluga sturgeon case study, a smuggler can cash-in a single fish’s roe for a month’s salary. When establishing the Caviar Emptor campaign (www.caviaremptor.com) and slogan in 2000 (“Let the Connoisseur Beware”), the combined leadership of the National Resources Defense Council, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and SeaWeb not only leveraged a clever pun, but went after those of us demanding nothing less than crisp “malossol beluga” (Russian for “a little salt”) by pulling a bit of bait and switch on the black market. The Caviar Emptor program strives for two primary objectives: highlight the dire circumstances facing the Caspian sturgeon and spur their recovery through conservation, aqua-culturing (fish farming) and, just as importantly, educate consumers about the delicious, and guiltless, alternative caviar options.
“One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.”
– Alexander Korda
Although the beluga remains the flavor of choice for discriminating palates, North American suppliers have re-introduced an entire menu’s worth of mouth-watering substitutes for imported caviar like: lake sturgeon (comparable in size/color to beluga), hackleback (native to the Mississippi/Missouri rivers), paddlefish (also called ‘spoonbills’), “choupique” (Cajun for bowfin), Chinook and Coho salmon (gorgeous orange, juice-filled globs), trout, whitefish (American Golden), flying fish (for you sushi fans), and even lobster roe. These American choices not only burst with the similar colors and distinct buttery flavors as their Persian cousins, but ring up significantly lower prices at the register. At Zabar’s on Broadway, a two-ounce tin of Caspian beluga costs the same as thirty ounces of Pacific salmon roe. Yet, Zabar's sell five times more imported caviar than domestic stock. Depending on your circumstances, and your appetite, you do the math.
“Caviar...the pause that says I love myself.”
- New York Magazine
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 protagonist, Yossarian, seeks his discharge from the Air Force by proving his insanity, merely confirming his sanity through his efforts. Heller’s novel’s title has become synonymous with paradoxical reasoning; contradictory logic that just might apply to the economics of caviar – the buying frenzy escalates as the price of caviar climbs – proving that it’s neither the supply nor demand that makes the stuff taste so damn good. Fortunately, with conservation efforts put forth by organizations like Caviar Emptor and the eco-friendly breeding by entrepreneurial aqua-farmers, the near future seems bright for the sturgeon. In the meantime, while our domestic supply stabilizes, what are we to do about our caviar addictions – go cold turkey?
http://www.starchefs.com/features/food_debates/html/issue_04.shtml
FOIE GRAS
Foie Gras: Delicacy of Despair
To produce "foie gras" (which literally means "fatty liver"), workers ram pipes down male ducks' or geese's throats two or three times daily and pump as much as 4 pounds of grain and fat into the animals' stomachs, causing their livers to bloat to up to 10 times their normal size. Many birds have difficulty standing because of their engorged livers, and they may tear out their own feathers and cannibalize each other out of stress.
The birds are kept in tiny wire cages or packed into sheds. On some farms, a single worker may be expected to force-feed 500 birds three times each day. Because of this rush, animals are often treated roughly and left injured and suffering.
A PETA investigation at Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York
Other investigations at Hudson Valley Foie Gras and America's other leading foie gras producer, Sonoma Foie Gras in California, revealed that ducks were crammed into filthy, feces-ridden sheds and that others were isolated in wire cages that were so small that they could barely move. Investigators also observed barrels full of dead ducks who had choked to death or whose organs had ruptured during the traumatic force-feeding process. The investigators rescued 15 ducks, including two who were being eaten alive by rats because they could not move.
Foie gras is so inhumane that in 2004 California U.K. , Austria , Germany , theCzech Republic , Finland , Italy , Luxembourg , the Netherlands , Norway , Poland , South Africa ,Sweden , Switzerland , Denmark , and Israel
Join Sir Roger Moore and countless others around the world in refusing to eat foie gras. You can even take one more step by giving up all animal products for one month. Take PETA's Pledge to Be Vegan for 30 Days, and we'll send you top tips on the best places to eat out, our favorite recipes, the tastiest animal-friendly snacks, and suggestions for the most delicious prepackaged cruelty-free meals.
Fortnum and Mason faces celebrity battle over its sale of 'cruel' foie gras
Roger Moore is among stars joining the calls to bar the delicacy from luxury store's shelves
Peta protesters wearing Roger Moore masks condemn the sale of foie gras outside Fortnum & and Mason last month. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features
One of the country's most celebrated food stores has found itself pitted against a vocal coalition of animal rights protesters and celebrities over its sale of foie gras.
Fortnum & Mason, the world-famous emporium on London's Piccadilly, now has a PR battle on its hands as the likes of Joanna Lumley, Ricky Gervais, Bill Oddie and Sir Roger Moore back a campaign calling for the shop to stop selling the highly prized but controversial gourmet food.
Foie gras, made from the livers of duck and geese that have been artificially fattened by force-feeding, is a favourite among many foodies. But the way it is produced – using metal tubes inserted up to four times a day to drop grain down the throats of the birds – has been condemned by animal welfare groups. Experts say it is not possible to produce foie gras without harming the birds' welfare. Polls suggest that two-thirds of people oppose the sale of foie gras.
The protest campaign, organised by People for the Ethical Treatment ofAnimals (Peta) – which is known for its high-profile campaigns involving naked models and celebrities – has already won a small but significant victory. Trading standards officers have agreed with Peta's demands that the store should amend the wording of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy to make it clear that its decision to sell foie gras does not comply with its framework on selling meat produced to "the highest welfare standards".
Westminster's trading standards department has warned the store that if it does not amend the policy, or make it clear that it does not cover foie gras, it could be in breach of consumer protection laws and leave itself open to legal action.
In a statement to Peta, Westminster trading standards said: "Fortnum & Mason have been advised of potential breaches… with regards to the content of their corporate social responsibility document. They are currently reviewing the document in response to our advice and amendments will be made shortly."
Abi Izzard, spokeswoman for Peta, said: "It's a great result for us and an embarrassment for the store." The group claims that Fortnum & Mason has received more than 20,000 email complaints as a result of its campaign.
On Saturday Moore said that the store faced a stark choice. "It can either highlight the fact that it is one of the last British department stores to sell a tremendously cruel product, or it can finally pull foie gras from its shelves once and for all.
"If Fortnum & Mason wants to continue to trade on its 'Britishness' and high standards, it should adhere fully to British law and stop paying French farmers to force-feed geese for foie gras."
Peta has also written to the Prince of Wales requesting that the store be stripped of its royal warrant. The prince has so far declined to become involved in the row, but he is known to oppose the production of foie gras, having banned it from being served at his own table three years ago. He has threatened to review the royal warrant for his local delicatessen near his Highgrove estate because it sold foie gras.
Peta has run successful campaigns against other flagship stores that were selling the luxury food. Selfridges decided to stop the selling of foie gras in November 2009. Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Lidl and House of Fraser stopped stocking foie gras in 2007.
Harvey Nichols has also ended the sale of foie gras in its stores and, later, in its restaurants, as a result of pressure from Peta.
One alternative to foie gras now found in some upmarket stores is a "cruelty-free" equivalent, called patería de sousa, which is produced from birds raised on a Spanish farm that are encouraged to "naturally" eat enough to enlarge their livers. But for many purists the taste of foie gras, which is produced only in France, cannot be replicated. Fortnum's claims on its website that its foie gras is "smooth, creamy and irresistible" and "the ultimate luxury for any time of year". Two slices of the "very finest whole goose liver foie gras" cost £25.
Fortnum's foie gras is produced on two farms which it says are carefully selected for their "excellent welfare standards". The birds must be raised to free-range standard up to the age of 15 weeks, in flocks of no more than 450, housed in open-top pens and never allowed to "reach a stage where they can't support their own weight and move around".
A spokeswoman for the store said it now "agreed with [Westminster] trading standards" that its CSR document "requires further clarification".
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