foy grass
It's summer Fridays!
So every Friday I take a half-day, and make up for it by working an extra hour all the other days. I guess this is a common thing either in the publishing industry, or New York in general. Today I got in around 8:45, but the consequence of getting in early is that you just don't have a whole lot of work to do.
Instead I read a New York Times column about migrant workers on an upstate duck farm. These guys force-feed ducks one at a time by inserting a tube and funnel down their throats and pouring into it whatever it is ducks are fed on a farm, which is probably a mix of styrofoam and other ducks. The ducks are genetically altered not to quack. They're fed so much and so often because their bloated livers apparently make for delicious foie gras.
The column though was actually about the conditions the farm workers face. They have to feed several hundred ducks three times a day, about 12 hours a day for 22 days straight with no days off. They're paid extremely low wages and get no benefits because for some reason New York's farm industry is magically exempt from the state's otherwise liberal employee protection laws. The people in charge of the farm say the workers "don't want a day off."
The comments to the column are pretty mixed as far as who deserves more pity -- the workers or the ducks -- but at least a couple of them tried to make the issue regional:
"I am shocked and angry that farm workers in NY are treated as indentured servants. I thought that this type of treatment was taking place in the Southern states not NY."
"I always expect conditions like this to exist in the deep south."
I get a kick out of the views northerners have of the South; not necessarily because they're unfounded, but because they seem to be based on such a firmly understood consensus. I asked Damien about it, and he said:
"Newsflash: We think southerners are backwater racists."
So every Friday I take a half-day, and make up for it by working an extra hour all the other days. I guess this is a common thing either in the publishing industry, or New York in general. Today I got in around 8:45, but the consequence of getting in early is that you just don't have a whole lot of work to do.
Instead I read a New York Times column about migrant workers on an upstate duck farm. These guys force-feed ducks one at a time by inserting a tube and funnel down their throats and pouring into it whatever it is ducks are fed on a farm, which is probably a mix of styrofoam and other ducks. The ducks are genetically altered not to quack. They're fed so much and so often because their bloated livers apparently make for delicious foie gras.
The column though was actually about the conditions the farm workers face. They have to feed several hundred ducks three times a day, about 12 hours a day for 22 days straight with no days off. They're paid extremely low wages and get no benefits because for some reason New York's farm industry is magically exempt from the state's otherwise liberal employee protection laws. The people in charge of the farm say the workers "don't want a day off."
The comments to the column are pretty mixed as far as who deserves more pity -- the workers or the ducks -- but at least a couple of them tried to make the issue regional:
"I am shocked and angry that farm workers in NY are treated as indentured servants. I thought that this type of treatment was taking place in the Southern states not NY."
"I always expect conditions like this to exist in the deep south."
I get a kick out of the views northerners have of the South; not necessarily because they're unfounded, but because they seem to be based on such a firmly understood consensus. I asked Damien about it, and he said:
"Newsflash: We think southerners are backwater racists."