Fierce Food is a group that celebrates food and drink. But it is more then that, Fierce Food is meant to be a counterpoint to the food fascists who want to tell us what we can and cannot eat. A place for foodies and those who appreciate the diversity of food culture across the globe and in your own backyard.
This is a group for people who understand that: "Food is not simply energy or nourishment; food is culture, whether it's French foie gras or African goat blood." and when we reduce food down to it simply being adequate to sustain us and nothing more we have become very puritanical in our attitude about what we eat and the social value it has for humanity. Reducing food down to this, makes us no less then animals - after all animals don't act [either to eat or engage in sex] for pleasure but for survival alone.
"This yearning for an agrarian wonderland, everyone growing organic vegetables and dehydrating them in expensive machines, grinding flax seeds in special Cuisinarts—it's some kind of futuristic Khmer Rouge. How important it is to be clean and pure, clean and pure, clean and pure. That doesn't sound good to me, it sounds evil." --- Anthony Bourdain
This group is many things, but what it is not is an open forum for a debate between Foodies and PETA activists - the World Wide Web has an over abundance of forums dedicated to the Vegan lifestyle and this is a place that is intended to be a Vanguard, a hold out for true omnivores on the internet where we can speak freely and praise food and the culture that surrounds it.
I'll try almost anything once, I've even eaten pig brain at a roast - tasted a bit like unflavored Jello... so I'm open to eating "Vegan Food", though ironically for all its "moral righteousness", American Vegan food is less then spiritually fulfilling - Foodies likely know what I'm saying here.
There are no Vegan tribes, this is a truth, however there are the Maasai , Inuit, and Mongolians who live and thrive wholly on carnivorous diets and their cultures are probably nearest to our hunter-gather and early animal husbandry ancestors.
"Livestock products are a welcome addition to the diets of many poor and under- or malnourished people who frequently suffer from protein and vitamin deficiencies as well as from lack of important trace minerals. Children in particular have shown to benefit greatly in terms of physical and mental health when modest amounts of milk, meat or eggs are added to their diets, as shown by long-term research carried out in Kenya (Neumann, 2003)." - From a 2006 UN report.
Speaking of morality, as far as I'm concerned the only morality we should be concerned about when it comes to food and its consumption is in regard to our fellow human beings, by this I mean the underpaid, uninsured migrant workers who toil in the field to make their living and no matter what you eat it effects them. Animals are not capable of having an ethical exchange, for they lack the power of volition and are obviously not sapient. Rights are a matter of a mutual exchange between equal sapient beings. We owe respect to the farmer and worker and even the cows but each in their own place. To turn this relationship upside down is the slippery slope that will lead to devaluing of human life.
The thing about morality and food, morals are strictly in the purview of the human being, nature is amoral - be it my pet cat playing with a mouse, the bacterium that eats away at a dead carcass or a lion taking down a gazelle none of these are subject to morals. Morals are what one human uses to bend another to his or her way of thinking. We've by our sapient minds were just smart enough to figure out how to keep our prey from running away from us so we could build culture and science.
For example even if its a bit silly: It would be wrong to eat Mickey Mouse, though not so much Pluto the dog. One is clearly a sapient individual the other is not. *Sapient beings* or those that we know will once they're grown up will be sapient beings are of greater value then ducks!
Debating "treatment" of farm animals is a distraction, since those you would do so with aren't so much upset with how our food animals are treated so much that they are farm animals to start with. I highly recommend that you don't bother waging this fight its a waste of good energy.
By the way: Equating the raising of livestock to slavery, insults any slave or people that has risen up against slavery. If you as a Vegan and make this assertion you've already lost the argument. Just one of those hot buttons with me.
The Animal Agriculture Alliance 98% of America’s Farms Are Family Farms, which brings me to a gripe with Vegan Philosophy. Vegans speak of the Meat and Dairy Industries as if they are monoliths devoid of actual real working human beings who are all "evil animal abusers". This is disrespectful of the hard work and family legacies that have gone into farming and helped build this Nation. They take what can only be the exception and turn it into a rule that "Farmers abuse their stock". Does it even make sense? Why hurt the things that makes them money?
You know I'm betting farmers have a better understanding regarding animals what they are and how they act since after all they do spend their lives working with them. I'll take the farmers word over a "Free the Animals" activist any day.
"Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone ... Bad food is fake food ... food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives. Food that's too safe, too pasteurized, too healthy – it's bad! There should be some risk, like unpasteurized cheese. Food is about rot, and decay, and fermentation….as much as it is also about freshness." --- Anthony Bourdain
Understand I'm as opposed to our "Fast Food Culture" as am to Vegan philosophy (who I see as modern Puritans), like Anthony Bourdain states above McDonalds, and Burger King... ect just aren't real food and serves only one purpose to throw some nutrients into the body, but it is food without passion, without life and is as plastic as poorly made tofu. Getting a Big Mac, is in no way like enjoying a hamburger at your local pub and is lacking almost the same spiritual fulfillment as any faux meat.
Animal Husbandry, we should where and when we can support real farming not the factory farm and if you truly want to make a difference fight that fight.
I want to know about the blood and guts, and all the "nasty bits" the truly earthy stuff.
links of interest:
American Institute of Wine and Food Founded by Julia Child.
FOIE FACTS pdf
Q & A with Ariane Daguin
D’artagnan Foie Gras
Sonoma Foie Gras farm
Chicago Chefs For Choice
The Foie Gras T-Shirt: Stop Tofu Abuse – Eat Foie Gras
Soy Online Not a Miracle food! Don't get me wrong I enjoy a bit of fried tofu here and there but wouldn't make it my "meat" by a long shot.
OSU SCIENTIST QUESTIONS THE MORAL BASIS OF A VEGAN DIET So why is a cow [a creature bred by human agriculture to be food, without it cows would go extinct] of greater value, then a field mouse? I've never been given a satisfactory answer to why a cows life out weighs that of a voles or other beasts of the field? In one instance an animal bred to be food is killed in the other a none food animal is threshed for a Vegan diet...
Anthony Bourdain blogs here on his friends weblog
A panel discussion about the food industry
Plant Neurobiology It would seem our green friends are sentient, of course rather then nerve endings they've chemical reactions but they react all the same.
New research opens a window on the minds of plants
Plants recognize their siblings, biologists discover
Do Plants Have Intelligence?Recent research has found that plants have neurotransmitters very similar to those found in humans.
Consumer Freedom
Sense About Science
The Speciesist's Corner - Exposing animal rights idiocy
The Illogic of Animal Rights
Fifty Things Animals Can't Do
If Alien Abductions Are Real What's this got to do with eating animals you ask? Well often the false analogy is made, what if an alien race more powerful then us wanted to use us as food, isn't that the same as us using cattle? No cattle aren't people, the essay touches on this.