Veganism.

Veganism is profoundly nihilist.

It seeks to do the least amount of “harm” by reducing humanity to a ragged tribe of half-starved herbivores who, ironically, must still kill to eat (more on the quiet life of plants here).

Veganism and its offspring, the animal rights movement, manifest themselves in their most neurotic form in stories like this one, where, in short, a woman rambles on about her adopted “daughter”, a Cornish Cross chicken she rescued from a factory farm.

The irony in all of this is that there is no continuation of life without death. The great economy of the earth gives germination and birth through death and decay. The dying trees and fallen leaves and deceased stag all feed the next generation. If we all lived and only lived, food would most certainly be scarce.

Without animal consumption, there would be few animals to live comfortable, ecologically beneficial lives.

”Snow”, the rescue-chicken, would never have been hatched.

Death begets life, and the cycle continues.

So why broach the topic? I’ve had a few conversations - which I enjoy! - with good people genuinely interested in how foie gras is made and whether I use a funnel to - as the animal rights activists say - “force-feed” our ducks.

You see, the optics of Gavage (the practice of using a funnel during the finishing process for foie gras) are extremely important to the Vegan/animal-rights movement. The image of a funnel down a duck’s throat is easy to anthropomorphize as “painful” and “cruel”, and the animal rights movement has successfully convinced people of various political persuasions that the practice of Gavage should be banned.

In that vein, I would suggest they add finishing cattle with grain (or - God forbid - having them eat their own regurgitated forage) to their list of cruel practices that should be ceased forever.

People who fail to think critically often bend like a reed with the wind. If science supports mainstream beliefs, they praise the merits of science. If science contradicts those beliefs, they ignore it.

It would be a very strange idea to suggest to an animal-rights activist that the duck does not think he is suffering when being fed during Gavage, because a duck is not a human being, and does not have cartilaginous rings maintaining a rigid esophageal structure, but rather enjoys a flexible, keratinous hose-like esophagus capable of transporting the strange menagerie of objects a duck will ingest (rocks, crustaceans, and the odd lost toy not being the least bizarre of which).

That does not mean that animal agriculture of the sort we practice (i.e. a rotational, pasture-based, free-roaming system that allows the duck to be a duck to the full extent of duck-ness) is not at times uncomfortable for our flocks of feathered fowl (though far more comfortable than the industrial battery farms). In all forms of animal agriculture, we are asking the beast to do something he wouldn’t necessarily have the precise inclination to do in the wild. We are honing in on some particular aspects of the animals’ biological capacities.

However, the ducks exist and live the best life we can give them precisely because we have designed for them a purpose that required their breeding and hatching. The Backwater duck is a duck and experiences duck-ness because Backwater Foie Gras came to be and continues to be.

And, if you are of the sort that believes life is good, then you will be happy for our beautiful birds.

If you are a nihilist, I cannot help you. If you are a Vegan, I urge you not to dissociate yourself from your slaughter of plant life.