Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for February 09, 2015

Didn’t Porky Pig once have a dream like this?

Love the burgers, though.

Hummus burgers.

Does he serve veal as well.

Hide the poodles!

All right, how about more of the duck and cat and less, much less of those irritating crocs.

That’s a lot of fatty burgers for an already-portly chef! I hope Li’l Guard Duck knows what he’s doing! I’d hate to see a Chef Explosion!

LOL

It’s good for Pastis to call awareness to this antiquated barbarity.

The chef is actually a self-portrait by the cartoonist – Stephan Paté

Always the funniest strip…..but this one is really powerful in the message!! I think your little animals are proud for a change!!

There is no chewing—that’s the point of the tube!

After what Islamists did to the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, I wouldn’t recommend it.

…must be French…an American you wouldn’t have to force feed…ie …Homer in Hell with the never ending donuts…

I just want to put in a good word for the Crocs to keep the comments balanced. I saw some geese being force fed on a travel show…a long necked funnel was employed to quickly pour a cup of grain in the bird ‘s crop. The geese seemed accustomed tl the practice. That said, I won’t eat foie gras or caviar.

If you’ve got a tube going down to someone’s stomach, they’d probably struggle to chew, and if they chewed it would be on the tube, not the food…

And, to be fair, being tied up looks like it hurts!

Also, I’m not really aware of ducks being force fed. There are force fed geese, some of them are treated atrociously and this would be a problem even if they weren’t being force fed, I hope. Some of them are treated very well, and inasmuch as I’m aware they don’t get even the same sort of discomfort that humans can get from being overfull. If you have ethical issues with raising animals for meat in the first place, then, of course this would be a problem regardless. If you don’t, I have to inform you that your chinese duck pancakes are probably about a few hundred times worse than ethical free range foi gras (factory farming is factory farming it doesn’t matter what else you add or subtract.)

And quite frankly, there are plenty of humans out there who are managing to feed themselves or their relatives about as much food relative to what they should have! Which just scares me really.

I suspect my kids do something similar with pizza.

This time we didn’t forget the gravy!

Several countries have national birds, national anthems, national dishes. Now Sweden has a national font. If the U.S. ever designates a national font, I hope it’s not the PBS font. One of the worst fonts ever. Too italic-y.

Nice to see that LGD is still up to his old antics.

did they have to kill the Duck, just for the liver? I want pressed Duck Breast… like to rub my face in it!

That tube is too narrow to fit a cheeseburger through it.

That tube is too narrow to fit a cheeseburger through it.

More Crocs, more Crocs, more Crocs …

Gotta go with LGD on this one!

@Vince MI was wondering if I would be the only one that remembered that old cartoon of the duck and the mouse force-feeding gravy to the dog (after he ate an entire butcher shop…..)

I think they use geese. But way to go, Guard Duck!!

I’m with Ford Prefect on this one. Besides: http://www.cheeseslave.com/chef-dan-barber-brings-sustainable-humane-foie-gras-to-america/

While here in California, we just repealed a law that banned it being served in restaurants. I love meat, so I know this may seem hypocritical, but foie gras seems to be particularly cruel.

The revenge of Guard Duck.

xxx

We’ve missed the psychotic little duck, good to have him back!

You know Foie Chef would be an appropriate treatment for Gordon Ramsay.

Guard Duck is back!

Pastis is Californian? Yikes.

Force-feeding a duck is not the same thing as force-feeding a person. Ducks swallow their food whole, straight down their gullet, so there is no “chocking” feeling and certainly no chewing. The only part that is perhaps “cruel” is that their stomachs are fuller than they would otherwise be. I’ve seen the force-feeding done and the birds do not appear to be in any discomfort. We are all so overly sensitive about these things because we are so far removed from the farms and from the physiology of animals that we assume they feel what we would feel.

Bird physiology is definitely different from ours. I read a blog from a vegan who toured a farm where they force-feed ducks for foie gras, and her observation was that a lot of the ducks weren’t even uneasy with their handler. While her opinion was still against foie gras, it focused more on the idea that the ducks are suffering from liver disease by the time they are slaughtered. Personally, I don’t see the appeal of forcing food on animals simply to manipulate their metabolism. The end result is admittedly tasty, but in my opinion definitely not worth the cost. I’ve also heard of methods that don’t require a feeding tube – essentially providing plenty of the right foods and letting the animals gorge themselves at their leisure.…Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. There are plenty of reasons to dislike foie gras and the method of producing it, but it’s not realistic to characterize it as barbaric or torturous.

You go, GD! Humans deserve a taste of their own medicine.

that is animal abuse people