France outlaws more traditional bird hunting techniques

France’s top administrative court on Friday banned more traditional techniques for hunting birds following the banning of glue hunting in June, in a ruling welcomed by environmental pressure groups but denounced by hunters.

The techniques banned in the new ruling by the State Council included practices popular in the southwest of France and the Ardennes region of the east of the country, such as hunting with nets or bird cages.

Its ruling revoked exemptions granted by the government to allow the hunting of birds such as lapwings, golden plovers, skylarks, thrushes and blackbirds after a 2009 EU directive that banned the mass hunting of birds irrespective of species.

It said in its ruling that the government had not proven that such techniques were necessary and the “idea alone of preserving so-called ‘traditional’ methods is not enough to authorize them”. …

riverrunner:

No worse then killing them other ways.

Then I gather you are not familiar with the French delicacy called Ortolan Bunting (which was outlawed decades ago).

First you trap the tiny bird, which weighs less than an ounce.

Then you blind it, confine it and force-feed it millet and sweet treats like grapes and figs until it has at least doubled in weight. Confined, sightless and with nothing else to occupy its time, Ortolan become voracious eaters and should handily put the extra ounce of glorious fat inside of a month.

Then you drown it in Armagnac, a crucial step that fills its lungs to insure that it cooks basted from the inside with fine brandy.

Then pluck it, baste it in clarified butter and roast it in a very hot oven for five minutes.

The bird is served whole and the diner pops the entire morsel into his mouth and eats it bones, beak and all. If perchance the bits of broken bone cause tiny cuts in the diner's tongue, the sweetness of his own blood mingled with the deliciously fatty bird only heightens the experience.

But before weighing in on the birds, diners traditionally cover their heads with a large cloth napkin to conceal the disgusting act from the sight of God.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#As_food
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQZ3rPsuHxw

Vive la France!

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