Dutch Design Week: in Eindhoven last week Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Amelie Onzon presented equipment for producing foie gras that allows you to choose between a better-quality product or a better life for the duck.
Called From Fable to Table, the objects include a feeding bowl where bread can be softened with water to make it edible for the duck, or force-fed to the bird dry (increasing the duck's suffering but improving the quality of foie gras).
Onzon also presented a bird-bath for the ducks to play in during their lifetime, which can also be used to drain the blood when the duck is hung to bleed to death.
Top photo is by Rene van der Hulst.
Here's some more information from the designer:
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From Fable to Table
Amélie Onzon allows us to choose: will you use From Fable to Table for the production of foie gras or to give ducks a more pleasant life? With the chair and funnel you can force-feed a duck, but allowing water to drip from the same funnel you can soften bread to make it more digestible for the duck. Duck bread made from special grain is force-fed directly into the stomach in the production of foie gras. Onzon made bread from it that can be used for feeding ducklings. Ducks can enjoy drifting about in the little ‘swimming pool’, but you can also use it to collect the blood that pours out of the duck’s neck when it is slaughtered. Onzon does not wish to shock people with From Fable to Table. “By allowing them to react to these objects through their feelings, I let them see how ambivalent our relationship with animals is.”
(Blood) Bath
Cherry wood, copper, glazed ceramic
Being both fish and fowl, ducks love water and rain. They can live in any part of the world as long as they have acess to water. For the foie gras process, the liver has to be blood free. Once the force-feeding period is over the duck will be killed by a cut below the tongue. The duck bleeds to death.
This object is a pond and shower for the duck. It is also a hook to suspend the animal for its execution. The blood can be collected in the sink.
(Force) Feeder
Cherry wood, copper, porcelain
Ducks are eating machines. They force-feed themselves before migration. The foie gras process is inspired by ducks eating behaviour. We force-feed the duck with grain using a funnel until the liver expands to the right size. This object is a duck feeder and a force feeding stool. The ducks bowl is also the force-feeding funnel. A simple irrigation system softens the food to make it edible for the animal.
Designer Amélie Onzon
Department Man and Well-being
Graduated 2009