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“I think that it’s gonna be analyzed a lot in terms of how am I biased and which side is it ultimately on?” he told me. “Everyone always asks me ‘Which side are you on?’ The whole reason this is interesting to me is that I think both sides make valid points. The fact is that I have eaten foie gras and I eat meat. To some people that would automatically show which side I’m on. But everyone tries to walk this careful path, and it’s really hard to be consistent about anything.
“I try to sort of get at this argument and say, well, look, let’s put this in some context here: if you argue that being a Tyson’s chicken is worse than being a foie gras duck—which I don’t know definitively but people certainly argue that—does that mean it’s OK to put a tube down a duck’s throat? Well, not necessarily. Just because you can make a relative argument that it’s not fair doesn’t mean that something is absolutely good or absolutely bad. I thought that the Chicago law came up lacking because it was putting itself forward–the statement on cruelty–but it was so selectively enforced. It was only about foie gras but it wasn’t about anything else.”
