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HMMMMM..Fricasseed Rabbit
Posted on 03/19/2006 5:51:41 AM PST by SJackson
Last week the death knell was perhaps definitively sounded for a long European Jewish tradition and a thriving agricultural sector in Israel.
Goose slaughterhouses and processing facilities in Binyamina and Petah Tikva told 200 workers they would be jobless by Pessah, as goose farmers too, brought their activities to a close, the Goose Farmers Association announced.
"As of today [Wednesday] we're stopping," said goose farmer Yaakov Yosef, of Moshav Beit Yosef, who ran a farm with his two brothers and their families producing 60,000 geese annually.
A government decision - which was finalized on February 22 when the High Court of Justice overturned appeals - forbids geese to be transferred to fattening facilities after March 15, and forbids the slaughtering of the fattened geese after April 15.
Roughly 600 families in Israel depended on the sector for a livelihood, the association said, noting that Israeli goose farmers sold NIS 150m. worth of goose products yearly, about 60 percent of which were in the form of 400 tons of goose liver (foie gras). About half of the sales went to the domestic market and the other half were sold abroad.
"Israeli goose products are the best in the world," said Yossi Levy, sales representative for Petah Tikva-based Foie Gras, which boasts exports worldwide, including Europe, Japan, the US, Thailand and Mexico.
Such a statement may seem unbelievable given the fame and prestige of French foie gras - one of the foundations of Gallic culinary pride - but the French themselves make no effort to conceal the delicacy's origins in the country's ancient Jewish communities.
Goose raising was a particular specialty of the communities in the Rhineland region of Alsace. A not-uncommon belief among French goose liver afficionados is that the Jews brought the tradition to Europe straight from the ancient Near East.
Claudia Roden - in her definitive work The Book of Jewish Food - notes that several Ashkenazic classics, from rendered poultry fat (schmaltz) to chopped liver (an uncle of French pate), traditionally were based on the goose in the "Old Country." Smoked goose breast, sold in supermarkets throughout Israel, is often referred to as "Jewish bacon."
"I wonder if goose fat will come back into fashion now that the goose-rearing areas of France have been found to have the lowest incidence of heart disease and its chemical analysis has revealed properties akin to those of olive oil," Roden wrote in her book.
Although the goose's deep roots in Ashkenazic gastronomic history are certain, its future - in Israel, at least - is less clear.
Foie Gras's founding family has its origins in Hungary, another country with a long tradition of goose liver production among both Jews and gentiles.
Levy estimated that the supply of Israeli-produced goose products will run out within two months of the April 15 deadline.
"Hotels and restaurants are under pressure. They feel that they're losing an important part of their menus," he said.
Managers of Cavalier and Joy - restaurants in Jerusalem that serve goose products - said they opposed the traditional method of fattening geese, and that they supplied the product only due to customer demand.
"I'm a French restaurant. That is what I make my living from. I have no option," said Cavalier manager Didi Ben-Arosh. Cavalier serves its diners roughly 10 kilograms of goose liver weekly, he estimated.
Joy's manager said he sells only "small amounts" per week. "The clientele does not support it" in terms of the volume sold, he added.
Staff at the Shoshani butcher shop, also on Jerusalem's Emek Refaim St., indicated that the store sells Israeli goose products "every day," but could not estimate the volume.
Levy said that after domestic supplies are exhausted, foreign producers will pick up the slack, and Foie Gras will market goose products imported from abroad.
"Naturally, we will continue to supply those who are interested in our products within the framework of the law," Levy said, lamenting the loss of jobs to overseas.
Foie Gras's facility had employed 100 workers. Together with the Binyamina slaughtering and processing plant's closure, the cities of Or Akiva, Jisr az-Zarqa, Binyamina, Baqa al-Gharbiya, Wadi Ara, Petah Tikva and Kafr Qasem will all have a few more unemployed to handle.
Meanwhile, Goose Farmers Association secretary Hai Binyamini said the Finance Ministry was refusing the industry compensation for fear of setting a precedent that could be applied to businesses closed down for breaking the law, such as polluting factories.
Binyamini, however, rejected the analogy, stressing that "everyone agrees that polluting factories are a public safety hazard, while deciding on the proper method of fattening geese is a more complex moral issue."
Animal rights activists and others opposed the traditional force-feeding method, called gavage in French, by which the geese receive the grain mixture through a tube straight into their stomachs. The method ensures the farmers a harvest of a larger liver, that also is enhanced in quality and flavor.
Due to the material benefits gained from the method, as well as its general acceptance (darkan de-einashei be-khakh), various halachic authorities and academics have concluded that the practice does not fit in the category of cruel farming methods forbidden by Jewish law. In contrast, halachic authorities have rejected cruel methods for producing veal since they only affect the meat's appearance. The expert statement on the matter, prepared in 2002 by the Justice Ministry's own Hebrew Jurisprudence (mishpat ivri) research and consulting division, was ignored by the High Court in its rulings on the geese.
"They decided against us without checking further," complained Foie Gras's Levy.
Goose farmers who had been operating legally - and within moral bounds as they understood them - for many decades and often generations should not be forced to pay the price without any compensation when a country decides to change its values, Binyamini argued, noting that he himself is 57 years old and pessimistic about his future.
The Finance Ministry confirmed that it opposed granting compensation, but said it would not explain its position until after a committee on the matter headed by Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry Director-General Raanan Dinor presents its conclusions. The committee is expected to present its recommendations to government ministers in the near future, the Finance Ministry said.
Levy believes the sector did not push hard enough to present its case to the authorities and the Israeli public.
"If we had a better lobby, better connections, this wouldn't be happening," he said, expressing confidence that ways could be found to improve the fattening method to make it more comfortable for the geese. "People also say that kosher slaughtering and milk-fed veal are inhumane, but they attacked us."
Goose rearer Yosef expressed hopes that the post-election government could be convinced to repeal the decree against his family's livelihood.
"We'll protest in front of the Agriculture Ministry, we'll scream 'injustice' so that they'll help us. If we didn't have hope, we wouldn't go out to struggle," he said.
Binyamini was less optimistic, noting that the sector is being destroyed to the last gosling and egg-laying female.
"There is no hope of cancelling the decision. We don't have the emotional strength," he said.
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What do you make of the fact that animals eat one another with gusto and without the least amount of guilt? In fact, they usually don't even bother to kill the loser in the struggle. They just swallow it whole and let it die on the way down the gullet.
Maybe Oprah can tell us.
HEY, OPRAH! Are you reading this? What's the proper use of the comma in this case???
Das ist ja wohl die Höhe [That really is the limit]! I was stationed in Germany and schnitzel was a staple when off base. Fortunately, we have a small family restaurant here in town (a small farming community) that serves breaded viel cutlets. The Zitrone on the side for squishing over the cutlets makes it all real. They don't serve the beer, though.
Therefore, when animals are raised on farms, where they are protected from predators and fed, it is the best life they could ever imagine!
If you've ever spent any time around cattle, you know that they're basically so stupid that they're just a big meaty high protein vegetable with hooves. They were meant to be eaten.
I think they like to do that. ~S
I think the problem with your posts is that many people here simply do not know what is done to the animal (as distinct from a cow, chicken or fish) in order to get their tasty veal. Once I learned, I gave up eating veal. I still eat other meats, but veal is off the menu as far as I'm concerned.
There is nothing cruel about the way geese are fattened today. It is significantly different from the way it was done before WWII.
You are believing PETA Propaganda.
So9
Grandin also views the meat industry as an overall positive for the animals in that it is the reason these animals get to experience life at all. She also points out that most ranchers and farmers are careful to give their meat animals decent lives (compared to animals in the wild, most of which either starve or are brutally killed or eaten by predators) because healthy animals bring the best prices.
My personal view on on animal cruelty is that it is bad not so much because of what it does to the animal (although that must be given due weight), but because of what it does to the human who engages in it. Cruelty coarsens and brutalizes the soul that belongs to God. From men, God loves and seeks kindness, not cruelty. So, the slaughter of food animals should be done humanely and without terrorizing or inflicting unnecessary pain on the animal even if that is not the practice followed by carnivores in the wild.
Now imagine someone kneeling beside Sylvester, putting one arm around him and using it to raise his head and then pouring grain down his throat. That's the way geese are fattened. Do you really think anyone could do that to a goose without protest if it was at all painful? The goose would beat you half to death.
So9
I was station at Baumholder for about 2 1/2 years.
....and next...the fish, fowl, pork, lamb, and standard beef industries? Where does this animal cruelty issue stop? Will it stop at roach protection (lobsters).....?
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Soylent Green
I was at Erlangen (straight East of you & just North of Nurnberg) for 1 1/2 years; '66 - '68. There was a ridge line North of town where farmers grew strawberries and made strawberry wine for local consumption. At the Western end of the ridge sat a restaurant with open patio seating looking over the town. It was a favorite stop on Sundays for their fantastic pastries which, of course, went down quite well with the wine. Another restaurant in town had the best wiener schnitzel, and a second had the greatest gansbraten (roast goose) I've ever had. Boy, what food!
"The death knell should also be sounded on the veal industry. No one should support animal cruelty."
Very easily extended to any meat consumption at all!
Sounds like something out Ruarks grandfather would have told him in The Old Man and the Boy.
I ate at a great german place in Anaheim a few weeks ago called Jaegerhaus - they have goose, duck, elk, venison, VEAL, etc, on the menu. Everything cooked from scratch. Superb!
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