Food For Thought Update
Remember the Burger King posh burger from the twilight of last month? Sure, I talked about it in the post Wasted Money Or Food For Thought?
Well, I remember it and I remember saying at the time: they’ve even managed to ignore the outrage that spreads the UK from time to time whenever foie gras is mentioned.
I’m not sure if I should do a dance for knowing what I was talking about, or be humble and say I was wrong about ignorance and they are wise to controversies. I think I can go for the former, but humbly.
- Burger King agrees to drop foie gras from £85 burger
LONDON - Burger King has pledged not to use foie gras in its £85 burger following lobbying from animal rights group Peta.
As exclusively revealed by Marketing, Burger King is planning to roll out what will be the UK’s most expensive burger. Foie gras, which is produced by force-feeding geese, was under consideration as an ingredient, but the fast-food chain said in a statement today that it will not be used.
A spokesman for the group said it had contacted ‘friends’ at the Burger King headquarters in the US to ensure that the UK plans were abandoned. Peta has worked with Burger King on animal welfare for eight years.
(Source: Burger King agrees to drop foie gras from £85 burger, BrandRepublic, 24 April 2008)
Now, I’m not particularly ethical about my food, to me if an animal didn’t want to be eaten in whatever manner we see fit, then it should evolve to taste like celery or gooseberries to help preserve it’s species from my tastebuds. Hell, if I’ll choose to eat venison at a Christmas meal, within ear shot of an annoying kid, and remark about Rudolph, ‘Donner kebabs’ and that scene in Bambi, to my fellow diners then I’m hardly going to give much of a damn about whether my food had a face.
That said, however, I’m not completely unsympathetic and do like it when something that is considered cruel is stopped.
The good side is that Burger King have taken a stance of compliance and conformity to what is becoming the prevailing stance on what counts as ’socially acceptable’ at this point in time.
The bad side? Unsurprisingly, PETA and Viva get a bit more air time. At least PETA UK seem a bit more down to Earth these days.