Animal rights group targets restaurant serving up foie gras burgers
After tackling big fast food chains, rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (Peta) latest missive is to denounce individual businesses. Last week, the group sent out a notice announcing it had given a Dinosaur Award - for outdated action or behaviour - to Causeway Bay eatery Burger Room. The group also sent a letter to the company asking it to remove foie gras from its 'archaic' burger menu.
Peta believes the method of obtaining the ingredient is cruel and unnecessary. 'Foie gras is produced by force-feeding ducks and geese until they fall ill with hepatic steatosis, which causes the liver to become painfully engorged,' it said, adding that the process also leaves animals with neck injuries, and induces shock and fear. Carnivores and some farmers though may debate that evidence.
CitySeen asked why it was targeting a single establishment when practically every restaurant in town serves up some recipe for goose liver. Plus, Burger Room is hardly the first to put a slice of foie gras and a beef patty inside a bun.
'We target anyone that uses foie gras,' a Peta representative replied. 'We are just about to release a faux foie gras challenge, offering US$10,000 to anyone that can produce a purely vegetarian faux foie gras comparable in taste and texture to the real thing in the hope that companies will stop using the cruelly produced, diseased and swollen liver of a goose.'
In the meantime, Burger Room just got some free publicity for an item that most meat eaters still consider mouth-watering.
