Lily-livered, cowardly bullies must die!
February 27th, 2008We wrote recently about naive idiots in York, wearing leather shoes, eating eggs, taking medicines developed in animal models and bleating over a restaurant serving foie gras.
A Cambridge restaurant announced last week that it would no longer have foie gras on its menu. Not, perhaps, an important event in itself, affecting not too many people. But the circumstances leading to the decision were disturbing. Daniel Clifford, the chef-owner of Midsummer House – honoured with two Michelin stars – didn’t stop serving the dish because he had been persuaded to do so by the argument that its manufacture involved the maltreatment of geese and ducks. He changed his mind through fear. The Animal Liberation Front admitted responsibility for acts of vandalism that included glueing the restaurant’s locks, throwing a brick through a window (narrowly missing a waiter), spray-painting the windows and generally trashing the place, causing several thousand pounds of damage. “My initial feeling was, ‘Sod ’em, we’ll get cameras and security to guard the restaurant,’ ” said Clifford. “But when the police told me what the ALF was capable of, I decided to give in. Ultimately I have to think of the safety of my staff and customers.” There wasn’t much media coverage of or reaction to the outrage.
Many restaurants in Britain serve foie gras. Have they all now become potential targets of ALF violence? Are our restaurant menus to be determined in future by whether or not animal activists approve of the way the animals, birds and fish on offer have been treated? Today foie gras – tomorrow chicken? The life of a goose, even one primed for its valuable liver, is far pleasanter and its distress far less (especially with modern methods of feeding it) than that of a battery chicken. A few thousand geese and ducks might have suffered in preparing the small quantities of foie gras consumed in this country; many millions of chicken and other animals, destined to be food for humans, have suffered more. I do not for a moment blame Midsummer House’s owner for submitting to the threats and violence, but I have an uneasy feeling that the day he did so marked the beginning of something new and sinister.
Several points here. First, it is nobody’s place to tell you what you may or may not eat, whether that be the government or the ALF. Some will not eat any but free range, organic eggs and chickens from a local producer, myself among them. Some will eat the cheapest, battery-farmed, tasteless, drug-riddled meat they can get their hands on. Some people will eat Freedom Food, as named by the RSPCA. I hope these people are not fooling themselves, salving their conscience, and have taken enough interest to understand that ‘Freedom Food’ chickens are grown in aircraft hangars exactly as those cheaper chickens they probably despise, but at slightly lower density. Freedom Food guidelines denote no more than 30kg of chicken per square metre. At 2.5kg after just 40 days of unaturally rapid growth, this still equates to 12 chickens per square metre. Anyway, I digress. It is about understanding, and making an informed choice without hypocrisy and without affecting anybody else.
A second point is that the POLICE have told this restaurant to give in to bullying.
SHAME on these filthy scum, charged with protecting the public yet refusing to protect this mans business and freedom to serve what he chooses to people willing to eat it. The police giving this advice are as sick and stupid as the ALF members, both intimidating this man to get the outcome that suits them best.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
This reminds me of a lunch I had with an anti-hunt chap – Its a story that I like telling to illustrate the absolute insanity of these people.
This man was railing to me about how hunting is evil, how it should be banned, how the foxes are torn to pieces.
We were at his mother’s flat, and he was preparing the lunch.
To my horror, and surprise in equal measure, he proceeded to put CHICKEN NUGGETS from Asda into the oven, followed by opening a tin of canned beetroot.
This is the level of unintelligence, the stupidity, the ignorance, the utter foolishness of these animal rights people; they eat factory produced food, made from tortured animals, and then will commit acts of violence to stop Fox Hunting, or the eating of Fois Gras.
As for the police, their reaction was wrong.
I have alot of sympathy for the police; whatever they do it is wrong. They are made to enforce insane laws that are…unenforceable, they are spat upon by every sector of society, and are paid next to nothing for their trouble.
It has to be said however, that if these attacks had been made against a McDonalds, you can be sure that the attitude they took would be completely different.
In a country where ministers are completely ignorant about food it is hardly surprising that the outrage over this is muted. The attitudes in this country to anything even tangentially related to wealth are traditionally hostile. Fois Gras is ‘posh’ (and ‘Froggy’) and so no one cares about it; in fact, the public secretly cheers on hunt sabs and restaurant trashers because they have a mistaken model of the people who frequent these places and eat these foods, and they despise them with the intense and irrational jealousy of a spoiled brat.
The factory farms churning out chicken nuggets are well protected fortresses; that is why these imbeciles do not attack them; they go for the soft target, the symbolic target, the ‘posh’ restaurant so that they can ‘make a point’. The actual point here is that attacking a restaurant with TWO michelin stars will do absolutely nothing to stop the consumption of Fois Gras, will have zero impact on the factory farming of chickens, cows, pigs and other animals on an industrial scale, and that is that. All it will do is make the vandals feel good. It demonstrates how thick these people are, how bereft of imagination they are, how impotent and meaningless their lives are. It demonstrates that they have utterly lost the important battle, and will never win.
As for the menu at Midsummer House are they going to take all the meat off the menu next? If they give in on the Fois Gras, why not the rest of the menu?
But I think something a little more clever is going to happen. In the 1970’s the Sex Pistols were banned from playing live in some cities, and they went right ahead and played under the name ‘The Spots’.
I would be VERY surprised if there was not a new and curious dish on the menu with an unfamiliar but goosey vibe to it. And how on earth are the animal animal activists going to know? None of them have ever even seen goose liver, much less tasted it, or been into a Michelin Star restaurant.
I can make that claim with high confidence, because if they had seen or tasted cuisine from a Michelin Star restaurant, they would NEVER attack such a place.
Finally it has to be said, why do these people not create their own counter culture cuisine, that is the rival of and capable of earning a Michelin star?
Because they are as thick as shit, ignorant pigs that is why.
But you know this!
February 27th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
why do these people not create their own counter culture cuisine, that is the rival of and capable of earning a Michelin star?
Here’s 2 examples for them in 1 review, by the seriously flesh-obsessed Jay Rayner, a very trustworthy critic.
And 1 of them was in York! Vanilla Black was our favourite York restaurant, and we are confirmed carnivores. It has now shut up shop and will reopen in Islington. Probably just round the corner from where these idiots live. I will miss it.
February 28th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Vanilla Black
Address: 26 Swinegate, York
Telephone: 01904 676 750
Meal For Two, including wine and service:
February 28th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Comprenez-vous le fran
February 28th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
‘Millefeuille vanille au Whisky’
OUI!
February 28th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
“1,100 kg de beurre doux”
brilliant!
February 29th, 2008 at 9:58 am
“1/2 litre de whisky”
ooh la la!