The French Love Foie Gras – The Fatty Liver of Stuffed, Abused Geese and Ducks

You can find out more about Foie Gras at
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/01/
foie-gras-fatty-liver-from-dead-duck.html

Nasty and cruel stuff.

Article:

Food fight galls French

Efforts in the U.S. to ban the force-feeding of ducks and geese for fattened livers mystify French devotees of their famous foie gras. Even the birds don't mind, they say.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld
/chi-0603100174mar10,1,1134745.story?page=1

By Andrew Martin
Tribune correspondent
Published March 10, 2006

PARIS -- Just after 9 a.m. on a Saturday at the Salon International de l'Agriculture, the celebration of the French delicacy foie gras begins.

Dozens of judges, swilling the sweet, white wine Jurancon, sit around tables laden with heaping plates of the rich and buttery gastronomic luxury that has become the object of enmity from abroad.

To say the least, the French seem characteristically indifferent to the criticism that force-feeding ducks and geese to fatten their livers--"foie gras" means fat liver--is cruel. Rather, armed with a fork and a checklist, the judges are sniffing, nibbling and evaluating 300 samples of foie gras for flavor, texture and l'intensite de l'odeur.

But the big annual convention that showcases French farmers and food could not fully escape troubling news from afar. Avian flu had swept into France from the East, prompting government officials in Japan and Hong Kong to ban the importation of French foie gras.

As if that weren't bad enough, news was filtering in from the West about proposed bans on foie gras--including one in Chicago's City Hall--amid concerns about animal welfare. Even California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has come out against foie gras, having signed a bill to forbid the force-feeding of poultry for foie gras production in his state.

Ban foie gras? Mais non!

"Arnold Schwarzenegger is against foie gras but he hasn't prevented the death penalty?" asked Marc Roose, who runs the foie gras promotion office in southwest France, the epicenter of production.

Roose said efforts to ban foie gras mask a broader agenda by animal-rights advocates to eliminate meat consumption. As for the politicians, he suggested that the legislation on foie gras was grandstanding.

`There are cultural differences'

"These people don't understand that there are cultural differences, gastronomical differences between the countries," he said. "It would be sad to live in a world where everyone ate the same thing."

Yves Klein, a French agriculture official and one of five judges sampling foie gras, expressed sympathy for American consumers who, because of bans, might be denied the pleasures of fatty livers from ducks and geese. He even waxed poetic when describing foie gras, saying, "This is a product that melts on the papillae of the palate in the best way."

Foie gras isn't the only French culinary treat under attack by American politicians and animal-rights activists.

Across the convention hall, Gerard Vigoureux, a butcher, complained about a push in Congress to ban the slaughter of horses in the United States. Three U.S. slaughterhouses--including one in DeKalb, Ill.--process about 88,000 horses and mules a year and sell the meat abroad to places such as Belgium and France.

Vigoureux, who was working behind a display case featuring cuts of horse, including chops and ribs, said the animal-rights concerns about killing horses were simply "folklore."

"Right now, you don't want to kill horses, but in 10 to 20 years you won't know what to do with them and they'll ask France to take it off your hands," he said.

According to legend, the French appetite for horse meat dates to the Battle of Eylau in 1807, when Napoleon's surgeon suggested that starving troops eat horses killed during battle. In recent years, horse meat consumption has remained fairly constant in France, accounting for about 2 percent of the meat consumed, said Michel Beaubois, president of the federation of horse butchers in France.

Beaubois said horse was typically a dish for "working people" but he maintained that it had many virtues that could appeal to a broader audience.

"It's tender, no fat, and a lot of iron in the meat," he said. "It's good for a diet when you want to lose weight."

As for why horse meat has never caught on in the United States, he said, "As long as Anglo-Saxons associate horse meat as a product for dogs and cats, it's not going to happen."

But Christian Berger, the agriculture attache for the French Embassy in Washington, who attended the Paris show, said the American aversion to horse meat was a casualty of the Battle of Waterloo.

"Should Napoleon have won, you would all be eating horse," Berger said.

Animal-rights activists and some members of Congress have tried for years to ban the slaughter of horses in the U.S. So it was considered a major victory last year when Congress stripped funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors at the three slaughterhouses that export horse meat.

Proponents of the measure believed it would effectively end horse slaughter, at least during the fiscal year.

Horse slaughter sparks battle

But in a move that infuriated members of Congress who supported the ban, the USDA proposed a plan to allow the inspections to continue as long as the slaughterhouses paid the costs of the inspectors. Animal-rights organizations have sought an injunction to block the USDA plan, set to take effectFriday, and several members of Congress have introduced legislation that would permanently ban the export of horse meat.

"We're not dictating to the French and the Belgians what they should do," said Rep. Edward Whitfield (R-Ky.), one of the sponsors of a ban on horse slaughter. "But in our country, they were not raised as part of the food chain."

Like horse slaughter, foie gras has long been a target of animal-rights groups because of the way the delicacy is produced. To fatten the livers of geese and ducks, the animals are force-fed through metal tubes inserted into their throats.

Several countries, including Denmark and Germany, have banned the force feeding of poultry to produce foie gras, and several U.S. states are considering following California's lead in banning its production. In Illinois, a proposal to ban foie gras production--even though there isn't any in the state--passed the Senate but hasn't moved beyond a House committee.

Ald. Joseph Moore (49th) introduced legislation in the Chicago City Council after chef Charlie Trotter stopped serving foie gras at his critically acclaimed restaurant. Despite the concerns of Mayor Richard Daley and some of his colleagues, Moore said he is optimistic that the measure--which would ban the sale of foie gras in the city--would pass.

"It still has wings," Moore said, adding, "The method used to produce this delicacy is extraordinarily cruel and involves literally the torture of animals."

But in Paris, standing in a sales booth stacked high with containers of foie gras, Vincent Manie said anyone who visited farms in southwest France would recognize that the ducks and geese are treated humanely. As proof, he pointed out that they don't run away when they are force-fed each day.

"I don't think filling the goose is any worse than what they do in industrial agriculture," he said, referring to the huge, indoor poultry farms that have become the norm in the United States. "Once we fill them up, they don't feel bad about it. They are not unhappy."