If you’re into food at all, this is a must watch. Dan Barber explains an experience he had with foie gras that can be taken and applied to many different areas. One of my favorite talks.

Here is some more about this from an article on Lancaster Farming:

New York chef, Dan Barber, entertaining attendees here recently at “Grasstravaganza,” a conference of pasture-grazing farmers, related the story of his recent trip to Spain to seek out the creator of an ethical foie gras.

Foie gras, a goose liver paté delicacy best beloved in France, is infamous for its method of force feeding geese feed through a tube to engorge their livers. Consumption of foie gras is, in fact, banned in several places citing this as cruelty. Last year, the award for best foie gras, the Coup de Coeur by the Paris International Food Salon went not to a Frenchman, but to a Spaniard, Eduardo Sousa who does not force feed his geese.
This event cause quite a stir in France.

Quoted in the London Times, Marie-Pierre Pée, secretary-general of the French Professional Committee of Foie Gras Producers, condemned Sousa’s version: “This cannot be called foie gras because it is strictly defined as a product from an animal which has been fattened,” he said.

Sousa is quoted as rejoining:
“We have won a prize in Paris where the jury has given (the French) a clip round the ears because we have shown that you can make a good foie gras without mistreating the animals.”

Intrigued, New York chef Dan Barber went to the Extremadura region of Spain to investigate.

“I had a transformative experience,” reported Barber.

It’s something I would love to try once in my life!  What do you think?