動物福利不只是吃不吃鵝肝的問題

The lifting of the California ban against selling foie gras (the hyperfattened liver of geese or ducks, brought about by overfeeding the live animals) is pretty much a nonissue, except to point out that as a nation we have little perspective on animal welfare. To single out the tiniest fraction of meat production and label it “cruel” is to miss the big picture, and the big picture is this: Almost all meat production in the United States is cruel.

加州取消鵝肝（通過對活鴨、活鵝進行過度餵食造成的脂肪肝）禁令是個無關緊要的小事，頂多只是表明，我們這個國家對動物福利是沒什麼想法的。將肉類生產中這個微不足道的部分單獨拿出來，稱其爲“殘酷”，是不能體現全局的，而全局是這樣：美國幾乎所有的肉類生產都是殘酷的。

The sale and production of foie gras was prohibited in California in 2012. Though the ban was widely ignored — foie gras was served for free in many restaurants and sold illegally in others — it’s now legal to serve it. (Production remains banned.)

加州在2012年發佈了鵝肝的銷售和生產禁令。不過，沒什麼人把這項禁令當回事——很多餐廳免費供應鵝肝，還有些餐廳在非法銷售它——現在又可以合法供應了。（生產依然是禁止的。）

But so what? Foie gras is among the most overrated of luxury ingredients, ranking right up there with caviar and truffles. Done right, all three are delicious, but we can call them rich people’s food, and as such they’re not that important except to chefs who want to impress rich people or rich people who want to be impressed.

但那又如何？鵝肝是世界上最過譽的奢侈食材之一，和魚子醬和松露並駕齊驅。會做的話，三種食材都很美味，但我們可以稱之爲富人食物，因此它們也就不那麼重要了，除非是廚師想要取悅有錢人，或有錢人想要被取悅。

Of the three, from the point of view of pleasure, foie gras is the least important (many organ meats are more enjoyable), although it’s the easiest to produce and the least expensive. The best truffles are white, mostly Italian, difficult to find and stunningly pricey — upward of $1,000 a pound. The best caviar (beluga) comes from Iran, Russia and a couple of other countries with shores on the Caspian Sea; not only are prices comparable to truffles, fishing these endangered sturgeon is strictly regulated.

從愉悅的角度看，鵝肝是三種食材裏最不重要的（很多器官要比它更美味），但卻是最易於生產的，也是最不昂貴的。最好的松露是白色的，大多爲意大利產，很難得，也貴得出奇——可以賣到1000美元一磅。最好的魚子醬（白鯨鱘）產自伊朗、俄羅斯以及其他一些裏海沿岸國家；它的價格堪比松露，而且捕撈作爲瀕危物種的鱘魚是受到嚴格監管的。

Foie gras is not only available at relatively moderate prices (you can buy it now for something like $50-$75 a pound), but it’s also never out of season and produced domestically. And it’s a showpiece: Most chefs cook it not because they love it but to appeal to food snobs, who can report, “We went to XX last night and had the most amazing foie.” Right. (See this headline, which is vulgar but not wrong; don’t bother to read the “story.”)

鵝肝不但價格相對廉宜（現在每磅只要50到75美元就能買到），而且永遠不會過季，又是本土生產。它是炫技用的：多數廚師會做，但不是因爲他們喜歡，而是能吸引自命不凡的食評人，這些人接着會寫：“昨晚我們去哪哪，吃到了美妙絕倫的鵝肝。”是啊。（看看這個標題，話糙理不糙；那‘報道’就不必看了。）

I’m not aware of a movement against killing sturgeon or other fish whose eggs can be used to make imitation caviar. This may be because fish are generally under-considered in the world of animal welfare, or because the most desired caviar comes from so far away or because it’s more precious than foie gras. But it also may be because caviar doesn’t invoke horrible images of gavage, as the process of overfeeding poultry is called — images that feature, not to put too fine a point on it, funnels.

據我所知沒有人在發起反對捕殺鱘魚或其他魚籽可以用來模仿魚子醬的魚類。這可能是因爲魚類在動物福祉的世界裏通常是比較受忽視的，或者因爲最讓人嚮往的魚子醬來自太遙遠的地方，又或者因爲它比鵝肝還金貴。但也可能是因爲魚子醬不會讓你聯想起強行餵食的恐怖畫面，也就是對禽類進行過度餵食的工藝——不想說太多細節，但畫面中包含漏斗這樣的東西。

It’s not a pretty thought, and it’s a less pretty sight. Of course, foie gras can also be produced without actually force-feeding because, like many animals — including humans and dogs — ducks and geese will happily eat anything that meets their standards. You don’t have to force them: They will stuff themselves anyway. So although the process may be “unnatural,” it’s not necessarily “torture.”

這個想法不怎麼美好，而畫面就更是醜陋了。當然，鵝肝也可以在不進行強迫餵食的情況下生產，和許多動物一樣——包括人類和狗——鴨和鵝會欣然吃下一切符合它們要求的東西。你不用強迫它們：它們反正都會把自己往死裏撐的。所以雖然這個過程會有些“不自然”，卻不一定是“折磨”。

As to whether this is “good” for the animals, that’s another question. But let’s get our priorities straight. Statistically, foie gras is insignificant; according to a spokesman at Hudson Valley Foie Gras, one of the country’s main producers, the market in the United States involves just under 600,000 animals per year.

至於這對動物是不是有“好處”，就是另一個問題了。不過我們首先把優先級擺出來。統計數據上看，鵝肝是微不足道的；據美國主要鵝肝生產商哈德遜鵝肝公司(Hudson Valley Foie Gras)一位發言人稱，美國鵝肝市場每年涉及的動物不到60萬隻。

My elementary math estimates that the United States chicken broiler industry kills more birds than that every single hour of every single day. (We produced an estimated 38.5 billion pounds of chicken in 2014, at an average of 6 pounds per bird.) Almost all of those birds are raised in conditions that range from unnatural to torturous.

以我小學水平的數學估算，美國肉雞產業在每一天的每一個小時里宰殺的雞都比這個多。（我們在2014年生產了約385億磅雞肉，每隻雞平均產出6磅肉。）而幾乎所有肉雞都是在不自然或帶來折磨的環境中飼養的。

If you allow that the same is true of most animals raised in the United States, from dairy cows (which last year produced roughly 206 billion pounds of milk) to egg-laying hens (over 98 billion eggs) to cattle raised for beef (24 billion pounds), you are looking at an industry that produces cruelty on a scale that’s so big and overwhelming few of us can consider it rationally or regularly. And if you consider that cattle, for example, evolved to graze on grasses and are often fattened on grains — to which their digestive systems must then adapt — you might say that part of that industry’s routine is force-feeding.

如果你認爲美國飼養的多數動物都是這樣的情況，從奶牛（去年生產了約2060億磅牛奶）到蛋雞（超過980億隻雞蛋），再到肉用牛（240億磅），你看到的這個產業催生的暴行之龐大和普遍，已經令我們大多數人無法理性地、經常性地去思考它。比如我們考慮一下肉用牛，它們通過進化成爲食草動物，但往往用穀物來育肥——這樣一來它們的消化系統就必須去適應——你可以說產業慣例就是強迫餵食。

This is not to say a few thousand ducks and geese don’t matter; it is to say that it’s important to keep perspective. Although the plaintiffs used a federal statute (see the Poultry Products Inspection Act) to overturn the ban, and although that makes some animal welfare advocates uneasy, federal law is often used to trump state regulations, both good and bad. The legal experts I spoke to were wary, but did not see that this ruling, for example, set a precedent that might threaten California’s new egg-raising requirements, about which I wrote on New Year’s Day.

這並不是說幾千只鴨或鵝不重要；而是說看到全局是很重要的。原告利用了一項聯邦成文法（參閱《家禽產品檢驗法》[Poultry Products Inspection Act]）來推翻禁令，這讓一些動物權益倡導人士感到不安，但聯邦法律經常成爲對付州監管的殺手鐗，有時是好事有時是壞事。和我聊過的法律專家對這項裁決有所警覺，但不覺得它創下了什麼先例，比如能威脅到加州蛋雞養殖新規的那種，這方面我在新年那天寫過。

So, since this is not the last word on foie gras in California (or elsewhere), let’s stay tuned. If it’s ultimately and legally determined that foie gras production is cruel, inhumane or both, labeling it so would strengthen the argument that so are the current means of production for most industrially raised animals (and their products). This is best seen as a test case, not as a significant defeat or victory. Foie gras itself just isn’t that important.

所以，這並不意味着加州（或其他任何一個地方）鵝肝之爭蓋棺定論，我們要繼續關注。如果最終在法律上裁定鵝肝生產是虐待，或不人道行爲，或兩者兼有，那麼正式判定這一點會強化一種看法，即當前大多數工業養殖動物（以及相關產品）的生產所使用的手段，也都是這樣。最好別把它看成是一次重大的失敗或勝利，而是看成一個試驗案例。鵝肝本身真的不那麼重要。