On the banning of Fois Gras

Now that California has banned the manufacture and sale of fois gras, the pate made by severely overfed ducks or geese, I eagerly await the formation of the Fois Gras Enforcement Agency (FGEA) modeled on the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Think of the army of informers who can spend their time and taxpayer’s money dining at fancy restaurants, while placing “bugs” in the souffle to catch purveyors of of the livers of overfed geese. I look forward to the televised raids. The fois pushers (“Chefs”) must not be tolerated. Police will, of course, occasionally have to use their tasers or other “not-usually-deadly” force on anyone who resists being thrown to the floor and cuffed for serving the product of this fowl crime. With the drug war as our model, we can look forward to law enforcement agencies seizing buildings of those who “innocently” leased to purveyors of finely-ground goose liver, Meanwhile the correctional system and its politically powerful union will happily incarcerate in its cages any traffickers of the greasy paté. Young scofflaws must be stopped. The State will deny scholarships to teenagers caught “dining” on the “goose stuff” on prom night. Likewise, we will have the chance to deport any family that receives a can Fois Gras back to where-ever it was they immigrated from. Every three or four years we will all be entertained when some ambitious prosecutor launches a Grand Jury probe, threatening some celebrity with years in prison for falsely claiming he or she “thought it was liverwurst”. Think of the hundreds of thousands that can be spent for trips of politicians to see what can be done to interdict the supply from France through such smuggling havens as Cannes or St. Tropez. Think of the millions for helicopters to fly over the outskirts of Petaluma looking for illegal Fois Gras farms. Squandering life, liberty, justice, and property is a price we should be willing to pay for such legal bans on activities properly left to informed personal choice. But as they say, what’s good for the goose, is good for the squander.