Canadians are not sentimentalists about animals. Fur is not a luxury in Canada, but a necessity for surviving the winters. Europeans are trying to punish Canadians for killing seals (although the Europeans do not express any sorrow over the fish that the seals eat).
Matt Gurney at the National Post has HAD ENOUGH!
Barbaric European food practices, Part I: The snail
The European Union is close to banning all Canadian seal products, and a grassroots campaign to boycott Canadian fish and seafood is gaining momentum. But what of Europe’s own barbaric culinary practices? In response, Full Comment will call attention to European hypocrisy and demand an immediate end to the brutal slaughter of helpless creatures. Today’s poor victim of continental cruelty: snails.
To be a snail born in the EU is a very poor fate indeed. The terrestrial land snail, found throughout Western and Central Europe, is a harmless creature. Subsisting on a diet of algae and plant life, they pose no threat to anyone, and are certainly not hunters.
Practically defenceless, they rely entirely on their hard shell for protection from predators. When confronted by a hungry animal, all they can do is pull themselves into their armour, hunker down, and cower in terror, hoping for the best.
These helpless creatures’ defences have proven no match for the cruelty of man. For thousands of years, they have been hunted and subjected to bizarre tortures before being consumed as a delicacy by heartless and out-of-touch Europeans. Starting in Roman Times, this barbaric consumption of adorable snails has spread throughout the Eurozone, and is now concentrated most famously in France, where the French word for snail has become synonymous with the cruel preparation for the high-and-mighty – escargot.
To make proper escargot, the snails are first killed, then pried from their shells and gutted. Their remains are then cooked in butter, and — in a truly despicable step — are then poured back into their own hollowed-out shells, to be served with garlic and thyme. In order to avoid any toxicity, farm-bred snails are often starved several days before their slaughter, to purge their digestive tracts of anything which might be harmful or even unpalatable to humans. Prior to their culling, they’re often put on a diet of nothing more than ground cereal, to fatten them up and avoid impacting on their taste.
The torture and abuse of these blameless mollusks for the culinary pleasure of the European upper-crust must be stopped. The National Post calls on all Canadians to boycott not just snails, but all European appetizers, until such time that the European Union takes action to stop this barbaric practice.