Here’s some impartial coverage of the controversy.
Whether the practice should be banned is argueable, but that it is cruel is not.
I don’t know what else to say.
Peace,
mangeorge
Quick dictionary definition of cruel: willfully or knowingly causing pain to others.
I don’t view animals as “others”, because they are not human beings. I do not believe human ethics or morality should consider any other species as being worthy of moral consideration.
I firmly believe in a concept of personhood and not-personhood. If you’re a person, I think that unless you’ve violated certain social contracts or are unable to care for yourself or make decisions for yourself you should enjoy the same general freedoms and societal protections as every other person in society. If you aren’t a person, I think you should enjoy none of those freedoms and none of those protections.
I oppose enslavement of human beings because I think by default, any human being should be considered a full person unless they meet one of the above criteria.
I do not oppose the owning of animals such as ducks, chickens, cattle, pigs, or sheep as property because they are not persons. If something is not a person, it can be property. If it is property, then unless there is a compelling societal interest, society should not be concerned or put limits on how the owner of that property uses that property.
An adult human who has not committed any crimes and who is of full mental capacity should obviously be a person and afforded the full societal freedoms and protections of all other persons.
An adolescent or child human should be afforded some societal freedoms and protections because the nature of human biology and development means that before a certain point pre-adult humans lack the mental capacity to make informed decisions about their welfare. However, since they are still human beings, and will (sans some misfortune) eventually become adult human beings, they should have certain protections while also not having certain freedoms (as certain freedoms are dangerous in the hands of people who cannot care for themselves.)
An adult human who is mentally retarded or mentally ill obviously has similarities to children in that they may not be able to properly care for themselves, so they must have certain freedoms taken away. However, they should still receive some protections by society because they remain human beings.
An adult human who has committed a crime but does not lack mental ability can justly be stripped of certain societal freedoms–because, as a competent adult human they chose to violate the social contract. However, they remain human beings and should still benefit from certain protections.
However, even the smartest non-human animal (great apes, dolphins, et al.) is not human. As not-human, they are not persons at all, and are not deserving intrinsically of any of the societal freedoms or protections of human beings.
Why is it cruel? Geese (and, I think, other birds) will gavage naturally under the right conditions. As much as the process seems kinda barbaric, there are far worse things happening to animals. It pretty ridiculous that groups like Peta get all riled up about this, but have no problem personally euthanizing animals by the thousands.
Whenever I talk about my view on animal rights there are some predictable responses, so I’ll address some of them now.
Should animals be protected from extinction?
Generally if there is a compelling societal interest to pursue conservation and protection efforts for a specific species, I do believe they should be protected from extinction. However, this is because of a compelling human societal interest and not because of any moral status being given to the animal species in question.
Some species there is a compelling societal interest to protect because they make up an important part of say, agriculture or some other process that is extremely important to the practical survival of the human species. Other species (see: Bald Eagles), are important symbolically to enough human beings that some societies view it as important to protect them. Both of those are valid reasons to protect an animal species from extinction.
Should people torture dogs, cats, or other animals for fun?
No, I don’t generally think anyone should torture an animal for fun. However, I define torture for fun in this manner: intentional inflicting of grave physical or mental pain for no justifiable reason other than a simple desire to engage in the act itself by the perpetrator.
The reason I oppose this is not because of giving the animal moral consideration. It is instead my view that there is a compelling societal interest in not having human beings who do things like this be part of our society. I think people who do things like this lower the general level of humanity in society as a whole, and also represent dangerous deviancy that can sometimes lead to immoral activity towards other humans. Essentially, I view this behavior as “immoral thought and act by the human”, but it is because of how the human’s mind must be operating to want to engage in the act–not because of any violation of the animal’s rights (which I do not view as existing.)
Force feeding an animal would widely be considered torture, but if its purpose is to produce a commonly consumed, beloved food product that needs to be produced in this way, I see nothing wrong about it. (On the F Word Gordon Ramsay tasted some “ethically produced foie gras” that a visitor insisted tastes just as good as real foie gras, in a double blind taste test he easily distinguished it from genuine foie gras and said it was noticeably inferior in taste.)
Pets?
What about pets?
Pets are property and anyone harming someone else’s pet should be punished due to damaging the property of the owner.
Being egregiously cruel to your own pets would fall under my definition of “torture for fun” and would be something I would see a compelling human-centirc societal interest in preventing (again, because of how it affects human society not animals.)
I have extensive experience with chickens and I assume geese are fairly similar. They are far too stupid to deserve any real protection; I doubt they can suffer in a meanigful sense.
I think that in this context “others” does include other animals. Partly because how a person treats other animals strongly effects how I would feel about having that person as a neighbor. In fact, how I feel about having that person as a fellow human being.
You seem to make something of a jump, here. I mean, you talk about differing standards of mental capacity when it comes to different groups of humans, but there’s a simple dividing line between animals and humans? I would have said that a logical approach to come to the same situation (and, perhaps, once you use but haven’t written out here) is that all animals fail on the whatever tests of mental capacity you would apply to humans, not even reaching the lowest “rung” of what you’d consider worthiness of rights. It seems a bit odd when you have a sort of sliding scale when it comes to rights for humans, but a total rejection of any kind of grey area for animals.
Maybe I skipped over it, but what part of that article proves that it’s cruel?
Do we have a word for “sociopath” that applies cross-species? Because apparently they exist.
It can be done humanely.
Also, this guy figured out how to make “free range” foie gras simply by allowing the geese to gorge themselves for the winter, which they do instinctively, if “you convince them that they’re not domesticated,” that is, raise them on a farm designed to simulate a wild environment.
Maybe you skipped over the part where I said “Here’s some impartial coverage of the controversy” 
I tried to present both sides.
Here’s an not impartial opinion. Don’t watch this if you’re sensitive.
BTW; I’m not a menber of PETA.
It’s fine that that’s your definition, but on a larger scale it would still run into problems. Why not define “others” only as Americans, or white people? It’s also a reason there are problems with having “human rights”. Not everyone sees “human” the way we see it.
I think it is cruel to geese. It’s yummy stuff, but cruel to make. But we do lots of cruel things to humans and animals, so foie gras is not really a priority on my list.
I don’t see how it’s a logical problem.
There is a binary person/non-person status. If you are a member of the same species as me, I view you as a person.
Within the non-person status, I don’t advocate or support any societal freedoms or protections for the non-persons. The only “pseudo-protections” I would support for non-persons are situations in which a person is being impacted. So I obviously support laws against destruction of someone’s livestock, because that harms a person by destroying their property. (It is really just incidental that the property is a living creature, but I just point this out so that we don’t get ridiculous and presume you can’t establish reasonable protections for property when that property happens to be living animals.)
Within the person status, there are societal freedoms and protections I think people should have. My experience of being a person, as a member of the species, has lead me to feel that within my group, there needs to be a sliding scale. The reasons are practical: protection of the mentally incapable, protection of adolescents, and punishment of those who have willfully violated the social contract.
The reason I don’t support a sliding scale for animals is because I don’t support any societal rights or freedoms for any animals. [Let’s agree for the purpose of this thread to refer to animals who aren’t homo sapiens as animals, but rest assured I know humans are themselves within the animal kingdom.]
Since the very first test before you receive any societal rights is whether you are human or not, no animal can even get through that first barrier, so they do not get access to the sliding scale.
Perhaps you did not read my post earlier, but this has been addressed:
At what IQ would you be cool with allowing the torture of mentally retarded humans?
But, yeah, I loves me some foie gras.
By and large we do use my system in most societies.
There are certain protections for animals, but no country really practices a philosophy of “animal rights.” And every country recognizes the ability to own animals as property. To me, you can’t view something as being of moral worth if you also think you should be allowed to own that creature and profit from it as a piece of chattel property.
It’s the same reason it was a fallacy that Southern slave owners could be doing right by their slaves. You might talk a good game about how you were taking care of them, how you treated them well, but if you’re holding them as property to me you are practicing something which says you do not view them as beings worthy of moral status, whatever rhetoric you might spew to pretty it up.
Most of the “animal rights” laws out there are mostly prohibitions against things that “offend the public’s sense of right and wrong.” Most of them make little sense. It’s criminal in some countries to eat horse, in others it’s a normal food. Horses aren’t distinguishable in any meaningful way I could think of from say, deer or cattle in terms of their intelligence or capacities.
I think PETA is stupid, but to me I think they are at least closer to making ideological sense. I don’t understand at all people who are fine with the owning of animals as property but who insist there must exist “animal rights.” To me something is either a person or it’s not, and you shouldn’t be allowed to own a person. You can’t own something you give moral consideration because to me it would be immoral to own something I considered to have moral value.
Under your logic, if a beloved food product that is not an essential component of anyone’s diet can ONLY be produced if a highly sentient animal is subjected to years of intense pain, you would still be for it. I find that immoral.