|
 |
Enter
your email address to receive our monthly newsletters.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Foie
Gras by Clarissa Hyman
Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat. Especially
their livers. Délicieux or diabolique, foie gras
is an issue gastronomique which engages the passions; the
question is, can the contentious means ever justify the gustatory
end? Clarissa Hyman investigates…
Foie gras, literally fat liver (greasy liver sounds
less appetising), is produced by cramming geese and ducks
with so much food their livers expand enormously, resulting
in what one Frenchman fulsomely described as “the supreme
fruit of gastronomy”, but others call “one of the cruelest
forms of food produced in the world today”.
Le gavage reputedly dates back to the Egyptians,
who noted how migratory birds force-fed themselves naturally
prior to long journeys; the Romans certainly stuffed their
geese with figs, and the time-honoured technique was kept
alive by Middle-European Jewish communities in order to obtain
fat compatible with dietary laws. In South-west France and
Alsace, foie gras was once only produced during the winter
months when the birds were fed with maize leftover from the
autumn harvest: foie gras in France is still synonymous with
Christmas.
Duck foie gras has only been produced for about 30
years. Geese are cantakerous creatures, expensive to  rear,
and duck foie gras now accounts for around 90% of
output. Still, the problem remains: goose or duck, there is
simply no alternative method of achieving the same end result.
It’s not only the French, however, who relish their foie
gras; although force feeding is not permitted in Britain,
retail sales jump about 50% at Christmas, but a casual glance
at virtually any restaurant menu throughout the year indicates
foie gras is now as ubiquitous as froth on a cuppa
cappuccino soup.
The succès fou of London’s Club Gascon, foie
gras mecca where there’s even foie gras for dessert,
is not simply explained by a desire to re-live jolly hols
in the Périgord. Arguably, it is also symptomatic of our national
re-discovery of good ingredients. Yet for any chef or consumer
with some degree of sensibility, it is important to do the
right thing in sourcing, and the important first step is to
distinguish between the traditional, artisan producer and
the large-scale industrial manufacturer in both France as
well as other countries such as Hungary and Bulgaria (Israel
has now stopped production).
Unfortunately, for many chefs, price is the key factor. Greater demand has brought
lower prices and consistency of product, but has also brought more troubling welfare
issues - think battery chickens vs happy hens and you get the analogy.
It is certainly distressing to learn about the vast majority of birds kept in individual
cages in factory farms, confined in tiny cages, force-fed by pneumatic pumps which
inject up to half a kilo of maize and fat in seconds, several times daily for up to
three weeks. This is unquestionably brutal, and artisan producers also condemn this type of practice.
By contrast, the latter stress the care taken in the rearing
of their animals, which is done in the best free-range conditions.
The birds, for example, will be fed in the shade, not the
dark, and are reared in small groups in pens, not in thousand-strong
flocks packed into cages. They will use manual feeding pumps
as opposed to pneumatic guns, and 100% maize feed, not flour.
The gavage is gently and progressively developed
and limited in time.
Quality of product (melting texture, unctuous taste and minimal
fat loss in the pan), declares Lucien Doriath, who runs guided
tours of his small Alsace farm, is only produced by good husbandry.
Fiercely anti-factory farming, he emphasises that hand-rearing
birds for foie gras requires extremely specialised
skills, and gives a result that can never be reproduced on
an industrialised scale. As I saw for myself, his birds are
lovingly caressed and gently handled, and softly talked to
during the process; they were all calm, fit and healthy, queuing
up to be fed
Yet, there are those for whom the gavage, however
slowly and carefully done, can never be acceptable, even if
the birds lead a seemingly happy and cherished life. They
believe there can never be a humane alternative, and that
the practice simply deforms the animals, a result which must
be unacceptable even to meat-eaters.
Sydney Smith declared that heaven was eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets;
activists say it’s a product made in hell. As for myself, the answer is strictly between me and my liver.
|
|
|
|
|
