Further Ridiculousness

Well, I managed to get my hands on the full text of the foie gras ban ordinance. I'm far enough away at this point that I can start to laugh at some of this, and some of it's pretty laughable. For the moment, we'll set aside the reference to the Zogby poll (which I've also, thanks to some help, managed to get a copy of, and anybody with a background in survey should get a good laugh out of it... more later), and focus instead on this little gem:

...WHEREAS, arguably our City's most renowned chef, Charlie Trotter, has stopped serving the delicacy, foie gras, in his restaurants...

This may require a little explanation, for those who haven't been following this saga closely. The whole debacle started a couple of years ago, when Charlie Trotter went public with his decision to stop serving foie gras at his restaurant. Another local fine dining chef, Rick Tramonto, made some commentary to the effect that it was hypocritical to stop serving foie gras because it was "inhumane" while continuing to serve veal and other similar meat products. This turned into a rather nasty feud between the two that was carried out primarily in print. It was this print that supposedly caught Joe Moore's attention, and inspired him to propose the ban. In interviews, Joe Moore has repeatedly made reference to Trotter's decision as leading the way and giving the subject the attention it needed for the ban to gain traction.

The irony is that Trotter doesn't actually support the ban.

While he has been quite vocal in insisting that his fellow chefs and restauranteurs need to examine the practice, when interviewed about a possible governmental ban on the sale of foie gras, the Chicago Tribune quoted Trotter as saying the following:

"The government shouldn't be meddling in things like this."

So, it appears that Trotter is now enshrined in the ordinance as an implicit supporter of a ban he actually opposes. He's a straight shooter, that Moore.