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Ban all animal cruelty or bring back foie gras

Foie gras as we know it has come to an end in California. In the name of protecting animals from inhumane practices, state legislators have banned the production and consumption of fattened duck liver.

  Regardless of where one stands on the issue, no one can debate the fact that torturing animals is wrong. Which is why one must wonder why big-time meat companies, such as Tyson Foods Inc., haven’t been banned from selling their products in California as well. The list of inhumane acts against animals by Tyson Foods is substantial. According to an article by Forbes, a farm that supplies pigs to Tyson Foods was recently found to have been abusing their animals by “kicking piglets like soccer balls, whipp[ing] them around … and [throwing] pig testicles at each other and [feeding] them back to the mother pigs for fun.”

  In 2005, Tyson Foods was found to have been torturing chickens by scalding them with boiling water and ripping off their heads when the slaughtering machine failed to cut all the way through their necks.

  These are just a few examples of widespread animal cruelty in the meatpacking industry, which has been documented by the popular film, “Food Inc.”?Banning foie gras from California while allowing Tyson Foods to continue to sell its products in the state is akin to giving a grocery store shoplifter a death sentence while allowing armed robbers to get away penalty-free.

  Lawmakers have selectively penalized foie gras producers and consumers who represent a small fraction of the food industry, without giving a thought to the large meat processing companies that are causing a significantly greater share of animal cruelty in America. All food processing companies should be subject to the same legal code. Lawmakers must make a difficult decision: either ban all companies that repeatedly cause animal cruelty or legalize the production and consumption of foie gras once again.?

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  Brian King is a Sonoma Valley resident.