Goose livers and human hearts
Okay, this is not strictly speaking about technology or even politics; the New York Times has an article today talking about the impending ban of fois gras in Chicago. That's right, the Windy City has decided (for animal rights reasons) to ban sales of the tasty goose liver and have tasked the Health Department to enforce it.
For those in the know, the French make geese fois-grasable by forcefeeding them grain, shoving a food-laden human fist down the birdie's throat. This strange practice causes the goose's liver to expand, often by a factor of 10.
I like fois gras. I also don't like to see animals getting hurt or treated badly, so I could go either way on this kind of thing. However, what I don't like is patronizing legal behavior. Food prohibitions like this one and others such as the ban on unpasteurized cheeses and the old one barring importation of prosciutto are not directly saving anyone's health. The potential problems that result from eating a bad piece of cheese can't be any worse than riding a roller coaster run by shifty-eyed carnies or just eating a couple of dozen raw oysters. And as for the protect-the-animal stuff, I invite anyone to dig just a little bit into how chickens are raised on the DelMarVa peninsula at the Perdue birdie death house and not swear off McNuggets for awhile.
Protectionism is a bad thing. There is a line somewhere and this is not it. Cheap-minded politicians looking to curry favor with crackpot constituents often propose this kind of law. They take advantage of existing enforcement groups created for wholely different purposes, because if they asked for ten million dollars to fund a goose liver enforcement squad, they'd be laughed at the way that they deserve. Hence, the health code inspectors are forced to enforce the fois gras law or police are required to check for illegal immmigrants or the IRS has to punish people who don't pay court-mandated child support. Every occurence of misdirected authority is the result of rodent legislators gnawing at the system long enough to finally draw blood.
This is why I carp and rebel against new surveillance and enforcement groups in government. Imagine all the Homeland Defense apparatus being used for a purpose other than terrorism, maybe to track down illegal movie copiers or pot smokers or maybe take another crack at the prosciutto gluttons.
Sure, today it's a goose's liver. Tomorrow it's your ass.
Posted on August 23, 2006
