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The Foie Gras Wars: How A 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired The World's Fiercest Food Fight (2009)

by Mark Caro(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1416556680 (ISBN13: 9781416556688)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: A thought-provoking book - and a fascinating look at how politics work, what gets done and what doesn't and why, how an issue arises and subsides. Although I'm a vegetarian and not likely to eat foie gras, I appreciated the way the author so thoroughly explored the issue of whether or not animal cruelty is involved in its production. What it came down to, for me, is how much the specifics of each human/animal situation matter and how difficult it is to make rules that cover all possibilities. It was appalling and uncomfortable to me to read about the tactics used by some animal rights organizations in this story, as well as to see how focusing on what people see as an attainable goal can pervert their basic values and purposes. Pretty easy to lose sight of the forest while... more you're stressing over a particular tree. I gave the book only 3 stars instead of 4 because I thought it could very easily have been edited down to a shorter version without losing anything important. Had to slog through some parts of it wondering when it might ever pick up again. I nevertheless recommend it for those virtues it does have and the opportunity to think about how we live and eat.
review 2: I was for foie gras before, and this made me even more comfortable on my position. It shows how easily shock tactics can be used to sway an uninformed public, and it also shows how many of the campaigners relied upon those same shock tactics as the only source of information. The reader can easily make up their own mind from the book, and that there is so much more involved within the whole situation than both sides of the controversy show. less

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