The debate over the ethical treatment of geese

A Comment piece by Margaret Wente in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail informed me about the growing debate surrounding the City of Chicago’s decision to ban foie gras (or ‘fatty liver’, a French / Quebecois culinary delicacy composed of fattened goose liver). It seems as though a movement, grounded in animal rights advocacy, has successfully lobbied to have Chicago join the collection of cities and states (at least a dozen countries) that prohibit the sale of this dish, due primarily to the manner in which the geese are treated before being slaughtered. Specifically, the objections I have read in the newspapers and seen on television focus on the practice of force-feeding that creates the hypertrophied (read: huge) livers in the geese in question. Many animal rights groups (and obviously, a fair few politicians) feel that the practice of shoving a feeding tube down the throat of an incapacitated bird is barbaric, and has no place in a civilized city or society

Margaret Wente takes a look at both sides of this debate; the activists who support the Chicago ban, and the chefs, patrons, and farmers who argue against it for numerous reasons. She concludes her article by saying:

“We’re never going to turn into a society of vegans. But people increasingly
agree that animals have the right to a decent life before we eat them. I believe
our great-grandchildren will be astonished at how badly we once treated the
animals we eat, just as we’re astonished at how badly people once treated slaves
and women. Meantime, we’ll keep making deals with our conscience.”

Making deals with our conscience. Wente proposes that everyone has a line (of propriety in relation to the ethical treatment of animals), and that everybody draws their line in a different place. Some things are considered wrong by the vast majority of people in a given society, while others inhabit the grey area associated with foie gras, veal, and lobster dishes. Debate happens when our respective ‘lines’ come into conflict, and in some cases (as in Chicago) the state takes regulatory action.

I’m not sure about the foie gras thing. I’ve never eaten it, or felt inclined to, but I’m usually opposed to the state taking a micro-management position when it comes to normativity. On the other hand, some of the descriptions of the feeding process are troubling. A few descriptions should illustrate what I’m talking about. Bear with me. I have a point, and I promise it has to do with national security.

The National Post simply notes that foie gras “is commonly produced by force-feeding ducks and geese so that their livers increase by up to 10 times the normal size.”

Stephanie Brown, of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals, adds a bit more detail in her interview with CTV news: "It is a cruel product when an animal is force-fed with a metal pipe forced down its throat and a progressively larger amount of food and corn (is) being fed to these animals so that they become sicker and sicker,". CTV also notes that “animal rights groups argue that saying au revoir to the duck and goose liver delicacy is long overdue because it's a cruel product the world can live without.”

The sponsor of the Chicago bill banning foie gras, Alderman Joe Moore, told the Boston media that the ban isn’t about “telling people what to eat; this is basically a statement against cruelty to animals. This is a product of animal torture, pure and simple. It doesn't need to be on menus in Chicago."

One of the often-unspoken components of the anti-foie gras argument, and indeed most animal rights arguments, is the presumed and unquestioned innocence of the creatures in question. We kill and eat animals for nourishment (or enjoyment), but we ought not to do them unnecessary harm, as they deserve the best possible treatment prior to becoming our sustenance. After all, they have done no wrong (and can do no ‘wrong’, in the human sense), and our treatment of them is based on industrial demands, and not a compulsion to punish or judge. As such, an ‘acceptable minimum standard’ of treatment applies, and the concept of cruel and / or unnecessary abuses – such as force-feeding restrained geese with tubes – is often looked on unfavourably. Chicago says that such behaviour crosses the line, as does the state of Israel. Elsewhere, it’s subject to debate and contestation.

As I said, animal rights are a tricky issue, and I’m not sure where I stand on the ban. But I can agree with those who argue that the act of force-feeding a restrained bird against its will is distasteful – wrong, even.

What about force-feeding a restrained and conscious human against his will? Surely those who take a moral stance on this sort of practice when it comes to waterfowl would be the first to stand up and oppose a similar act when the subject is a living, thinking, protesting, human being, right? Surely those of us who are undecided about the propriety of forcibly inserting feeding tubes into the throats of immobilized livestock would find our ambivalence replaced with moral repugnance if it was a fellow person in the place of the goose.

Or would we?

Is it possible that our society can take a stand about the inhumanity of a treatment as it pertains to a bird, but turn a blind eye to the same treatment when it pertains to a human being?

I ask because the images I have seen and the descriptions I have heard in relation to the foie gras debate remind me of another recent situation where restrained subjects have had feeding tubes shoved down their throats against their will, only in this case, the subjects were a bit bigger, wearing orange jumpsuits, and members of the human race. I am referring to the detainees who have been held at the American Guantanamo Bay detention facility (and other detainees being held in places we know even less about).

For some time now, we have known that hunger-striking American detainees at Guantanamo have been subjected to force-feeding by military staff (not always doctors), using restraining chairs and nasal tubes. In June 2005, roughly 210 detainees went on hunger strike, demanding that the US military either charge them with some kind of offence or release them from custody.

On December 30, 2005, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Novak, told the BBC that “there There are credible allegations that Guantanamo hunger strikers are being force-fed in a cruel manner.” From the article: He told the BBC that he had received reports that some hunger strikers had had thick pipes inserted through the nose and forced down into the stomach. This was allegedly done roughly, sometimes by prison guards rather than doctors. As a result, some prisoners had reported bleeding and vomiting he said.

At the time, the Pentagon said that there was no evidence that the prisoners had been treated in an inappropriate way.

On March 1, 2006, The Washington Post reported on a 13-page legal filing by lawyers representing a Guantanamo captive. The filing claimed that their client “was tortured to coerce him into abandoning a lengthy hunger strike, and they contend that tactics used to force-feed detainees explicitly violate a new federal law [championed by John McCain] that bars cruel or degrading treatment of people in U.S. custody.”

The Washington Post further reports that the procedures being challenged

“include strapping detainees to a chair, forcing a tube down their throats, feeding them large quantities of liquid nutrients and water, and leaving them in the chair for as long as two hours to keep them from purging the food, according to detainee accounts and military officials. Detainees told their attorneys that the tactics, first reported last month in the New York Times, caused them to urinate and defecate on themselves and that the insertion and removal of the feeding tube was painful.”

Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, who leads the U.S. Southern Command, told reporters last week that the new techniques were designed to end the strike, but defended strapping detainees to the padded chair. He said detainees had devised a way to siphon the food out of their stomachs after they had returned to their cells, using the feeding tubes left inside them.

Newsstatesman.com provides some additional descriptors, for our edification:

Julia Tarver, whose law firm represents prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, stated that
at least two of their clients were being force-fed from tubes inserted through
their noses into their stomachs. Without anaesthetic or sedative, Yousef
al-Shehri was restrained by two soldiers, Tarver's testimony continued, "one
holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff
member forcibly inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat". The result
of the force-feeding was that he and others were vomiting up "substantial
amounts of blood". […]After two weeks of this treatment, Yousef and other
prisoners were transferred from the hospital back to Camp Delta and placed in
solitary cells. Here they were given no food or water for five days before the
authorities resumed the force-feeding. This time the tubes were larger.
According to Tarver's statements: "These tubes - the thickness of a finger, he
estimated - were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture." After they were
removed he fainted: "Yousef described the pain as unbearable." The riot guards
(Emergency Reaction Force - ERF) removed these "Nasal Gastric (NG) tubes by
placing a foot on one end of the tube and yanking the detainee's head back by
his hair, causing the tube to be painfully ejected from the detainee's nose.
Then, in front of the Guantanamo physicians . . . the guards took NG tubes from
one detainee, and with no sanitisation whatsoever, reinserted it into the nose
of a different detainee. When these tubes were reinserted the detainees could
see the blood and stomach bile from the other detainees remaining on the tubes."
The head of the detainee hospital watched and made no attempt to intervene.
Another prisoner, Abdul-Rahman Shalabi, described similar incidents. "One Navy
doctor came," Tarver's testimony states, "and put the tube in his nose and down
his throat and then just kept moving the tube up and down, until finally
Abdul-Rahman started violently throwing up blood." The British doctor and
campaigner David Nicholl demonstrated how violent this procedure could be when
he had a tube inserted into himself by a fellow doctor outside the US embassy a
few weeks ago. Dr Nicholl said: "It is fundamental to a doctor's
responsibilities in dealing with a hunger strike that the detainee has the
right, as any other patient would, to refuse treatment." The US military, he
said, "defies this clear ethical obligation. The detainees are restrained with
shackles on their arms, legs, waist, chest, knees and head; are not
anaesthetised or sedated; and are subject to this practice as a further means of
torture."

Amnesty International and its subsidiaries have been decrying unnecessarily cruel force-feeding (and indeed, everything associated with the Guantanamo facility) since the story broke. They have campaigned effectively to bring issues related to Guantanamo before US courts, and a recent ruling (in the Hamden case) has barred the US administration from trying Guantanamo detainees in military tribunals. But the issue of force feeding has never been resolved. In fact, representatives of the US military have gone on record as saying that the hunger strike “is consistent with al-Qaeda training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States government."

Jurist notes that US Army General Bantz J. Craddock, the military commander in charge of the Guantanamo facility has confirmed that military officials have been employing aggressive tactics – including restrained force-feeding – to deter detainee hunger strikes.

So let’s come full circle here.

People are lobbying with some success against the practice of force-feeding as it pertains to geese and in the context of foie gras production. The general argument against this practice is based on the contention that it is cruel and inhumane treatment, and that foie gras “is a product of animal torture, pure and simple”. Chicago has recently banned the product, as has Israel and a number of European states. Farmers argue that the force-feeding is necessary in order to produce a culinary delicacy.

Meanwhile, in Cuba, The US administration is using a disturbingly-similar process to deter detainees from hunger-striking (bad publicity) in the context of the ‘war on terror.’ Human rights organizations and lawyers have been screaming bloody murder about this, but real public and diplomatic pressure has not been effectively brought to bear. US officials argue that the force-feeding is necessary in order to prevent detainees (languishing in indefinite detention in a super-max facility) from taking their own lives in protest of their treatment.

I would go so far as to suggest that there are those who would stand up against foie gras but remain silent about the treatment of the Guantanamo detainees. It’s clear that the state of Israel has taken this position and probably a few others as well.

Clearly the two situations cannot be compared directly – on the one hand, there is an ethical debate over the treatment of livestock, and about the way that we as enlightened consumers comport ourselves in relation to animals that we breed for our consumption; on the other hand, we have a debate over the conduct of a state in relation to its very human prisoners, and the acceptability of certain interventions in the context of a complex conflict.

But when I read the articles on foie gras, I couldn’t help but think of the disturbing similarities between the plights of both the geese and the detainees at Guantanamo (who have been ‘out of sight, out of mind’ in the media for some time now). The common elements – restraint, resistance, confinement, force, power, powerlessness, and of course the feeding tube itself – allow us to juxtapose the two situations, and to ask ourselves what the differences really are.

At first glance, they are profound, at the levels of scale, context, and morality. Geese are not humans, ought not to be considered as humans (the reverse is true as well), and do not have the same rights as humans. They are animals, and most societies on the planet – even the most egalitarian and naturalistic – draw some profound ethical distinctions between humans and animals. Animal rights are not the same as human rights.

But in Guantanamo, the detainees are no more able to resist the feeding tube than the geese on a farm in Quebec. They are denied the right of resistance; in fact, they find themselves restrained and force-fed precisely because they have attempted to resist (through hunger striking, an age-old response to being imprisoned).

Of course, the US administration would laugh at the comparison, and so would many in the public. I would hazard that the administration would even take exception to my comparison of geese to humans – if anything, they might say, I should be framing the comparison as one between geese and terror suspects. And terror suspects (or detainees, or unlawful combatants) are not the same as you and me, right? They aren’t entitled to the same considerations, especially not during a ‘war on terror’.

In a way, the geese have a bit of an advantage, by virtue of their being ‘innocent animals’. As I mentioned earlier, when we have our enlightened debates about animal rights, even the pro-foie gras, pro-veal, pro-lobster camps don’t justify their positions by arguing that these creatures deserve condemnation, punishment, demonization, or repression. We assume innocence, and would be foolish to do otherwise, lest we imply that animals are equally capable of human morality.

In the name of Justice, we used to assume innocence in relation to people as well. Even when we had reason to believe that they were guilty, we used to recognize certain universal rights – to habeas corpus, to a fair trial, to representation, and even to resistance. In some countries, we still pretend that these are universal rights; pillars holding up enlightened society. But what does the situation at Guantanamo teach us about our commitment to universal standards of conduct and treatment? Why is it so easy for me to compare the situations of livestock and detainees? Governments have always been engaged in social control and political repression, but what we see in Guantanamo is different, and it is certainly viewed differently by many around the world. What we see in Guantanamo is a process of diminishing, whereby the things that signify common humanity are stripped away so utterly that there isn’t even a real attempt to conceal the process. No freedom; no charges; no trials; no convictions; no recourse; and absolutely no resistance. Ultimately, no humanity. And when you diminish people to the extent that you don’t even recognize them as humans anymore, there’s no limit to what you can do to them.

So when I read the articles last weekend about the ethical treatment of geese, and when I saw the words ‘humane’, ‘inhumane’, ‘cruel’, ‘torture’, ‘unnecessary’, and ‘wrong’ being employed, I was struck by the bizarreness of a society where enlightened debate about foie gras can lead to regulatory action and a government, acting on a mandate from the public, can treat human beings like animals.