^ Thank you. So relieved to have found at least one critical comment on the last page of this thread.

Quesadilla, everytime

^^^^^

A couple of years ago, eating at Ai Fiori at the Setai Hotel (now the Langham Place) in Manhattan, I met an expat Brit (now 40 years a professor at Stanford Med School) who said he always orders sweetbreads when he sees them on the menu, and that Ai Fiori's were the best he had ever had. Since then, I've followed his lead and ordered sweetbreads whenever I have seen them, but alas, I haven't seen them since. :(

I justify a once a year indulgence by avoiding chicken as much as possible due to the inhumane cages (and salmonella.)

One can certainly find free-range chicken not raised in cages. And in any case, it doesn't make up for indulging in the effective torture of ducks. Look at a video of it on YouTube and then try to eat it again without disgust.

There is so much inhumanity in the way we source the vast majority of animal-based proteins. Unless you are actively going to help to change it, I don't see what passing a judgement on those who eat one specific protein produced inhumanely, while indulging in all other varieties does. Beyond that there's plenty of evidence to suggest it's far from the most inhumane livestock practice around. This is a good article to me that isn't full of pictures of dead ducks and foggy eyes meant to initiate a visceral reaction from viewers: The Physiology of Foie