Better Puck Next Time

Wolfgang Puck, the Los Angeles-based Austrian celebrity chef, head of a culinary empire that from ranges from luxury restaurant such as Spago, Cut, Chinois and Postrio to the more informal Wolfgang Puck Café and the Wolfgang Puck Express chain, not to mention a line of canned soups, frozen pizza, kitchen cookware and cookbooks, said on Wednesday that he intends to use only eggs and meat only from animals raised under strict humane standards.

Some top chefs in the USA refuse to serve foie gras, the fattened liver of force-fed ducks and geese, but Puck has now gone further than that. Working in collaboration with the Humane Society of the United States, he has ordered his three companies to buy eggs only from chickens not confined to small cages, veal and pork from farms where animals are not confined in crates, poultry meat from farmers adhering to animal welfare standards higher than those indicated by top US chicken and turkey producers and seafood harvested without endangering the environment or depleting stocks.

In a telephone interview with the New York Times, Puck explains, ‘We decided about three months ago to be really much more socially responsible. We feel the quality of the food is better, and our conscience feels better … I have been telling people we have to stand for something for the next 25 years. It’s time for us to make a statement and a time for us to see how we treat what we eat’.

Sources:

Wolfgang Puck
www.wolfgangpuck.com

Humane Society of the United States
www.hsus.org