The flap over foie gras

If you are concerned about foie gras production, ask yourself how all the meat you eat is raised and slaughtered.

I was a foie gras laggard, trying it for the first time only about 10 years ago. It was one of those ideal food experiences (nice setting, great conversation, good wine) and for days afterward I craved the silken melt-in-your-mouth feeling like an addict. It has that effect on people. Rationally minded individuals who care about things like fat grams throw all caution to the wind and order foie gras on a bed of greens flecked with lardon and topped by a gently deep-fried egg (thank you, oh masterful chef Isaac Becker for that piece of culinary heaven). Though I was late to it, and am still making up time for that oversight, foie gras itself is far from new. The first reference to it hails back to 2500 BC, when the crafty Egyptians began to fatten up geese, and commemorated the practice in etchings carved on tomb walls.

For a long time, it was popular only among well-heeled, well-traveled foodies who’d sampled it in France and discussed it in reverent voices usually reserved for Updike’s latest “New Yorker” piece. When it was served in the United States, it was typically in upscale, white tablecloth-type places, not readily available to the hungry masses. But, as global travel and domestic production rose, it began to show up on menus more frequently, and in the last five years or so, it’s become almost de rigueur at serious restaurants.

Its longstanding place in the epicurean world aside, black clouds have gathered over the fatted duck liver. Animal rights groups have mobilized against the industry, citing the cruelty of force-feeding the animals during the finishing process, and the movement is gaining ground. The most recent swell of support was generated in Chicago where the City Council voted to ban restaurants from serving it, and there’s also legislation making the rounds in New York. A statute in California has banned production by 2012. Williams Sonoma stopped selling it in their catalog and Whole Foods recently played the heavy with Grimaud Farms, which processes Sonoma Foie Gras, telling them to cease doing so or it would end the relationship. (Grimaud caved since foie gras comprised just a small part of their overall business with the retailer.)

Of course, seen from a certain angle, foie gras production doesn’t look all that attractive. The ducks are slaughtered at four months old after being force fed a corn mixture that makes their livers fatty and creates the delicacy. On the other hand, foie gras production is a fairly easy, emotional target for the animal rights groups. And, as Scott Pikovsky, owner of specialty food distributor Great Ciao in Minneapolis pointed out, if you’re concerned about cruelty to animals, you can’t stop at foie gras, you have to ask yourself about how all of the meat you eat is raised, fed and slaughtered.

There’s also a substantial—and dramatic—difference between commercial and artisan producers, and you only need to spend a short time talking to Christian Gasset, the foie gras farmer who runs Au Bon Canard based in Caledonia, Minn. to understand that difference. Gasset raises roughly 1,500 ducks in a year, while some large-scale producers slaughter between 7,000 and 10,000 ducks each week. “This is exactly what I wanted to do, have a small farm,” said the thoughtful Gasset. “I don’t intend to grow. We only do about 50 or 60 ducks a week. I don’t want to do more than that. The more you increase, the more the quality goes down.”

The time spent on each duck’s care and feeding is intensive, especially since Gasset prepares the corn mixture and feeds the ducks himself during the final weeks. In fact, from the time the ducks arrive at his farm at one day old throughout the next four months, they are tenderly cared for by Gasset and his wife. “It seems as though there are just a handful of people wanting to change things about a small industry,” Gasset mused. “Who knows what the future looks like, now that’s it’s gotten political.”

It’s this kind of legislating of palettes that has chefs, producers and vendors scratching their heads in astonishment. “It seems to me that if there are people that, for whatever reason do or don’t want to eat certain foodstuffs, we ought to let the market decide,” Pikovsky said.