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🦋 Chinese Feathers

Interesting, so now I'm reading Elizabeth Costello and I'm seeing arguments about morality and animal rights everywhere I look. Today Saramago is writing about lobsters and geese:

Putting a living lobster in boiling water and cooking it is an old culinary practice in the western world. It seems that if the lobster were dead in the bath, its final flavor would be different, for the worse. There are furthermore those who say that the rosy color with which the crustacean leaves the pot is due precisely to the high temperature of the water. I don't know it, I'm saying what I've been told, I am incapable of properly frying an egg. One day I saw in a documentary how to prepare chickens, how to kill and butcher them, and I was very close to throwing up. And the other day, if I am remembering right, I read a magazine article about the use of rabbits in the manufacture of cosmetics, and there I found out that the tests to prevent any possible irritation caused by the ingredients of shampoos involve applying them directly to the eyes of these animals, after the fashion of the dreadful Dr. Death, who injected petroleum into the hearts of his victims. Now, a brief notice appears in the periodicals informing me of how, in China, the birds' feathers which are destined to be stuffing for pillows are plucked out the same way, while living, after which they are cleaned, disinfected, and exported for the enjoyment of civilized societies which find it proper and fashionable. I will not comment, it is not worth the trouble, these feathers are enough.

posted evening of Thursday, February 12th, 2009
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