Foie Gras Feels the Heat
Alison
of foie gras, and the uncertain future of foie gras production in New
York (ironically and unfortunately, the reporter includes a recipe at
the end).
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/10/13/foiegra0.htm
Foie gras feels the heat
By Dave Richardson
Times Herald-Record
drich...@th-record.com
Ferndale - News flash: the Hudson Valley's foie gras industry is
in crisis.
Foie what, you ask? Foie gras, pronounced "fwah grah." It's a
delicacy made from duck or goose livers.
We're not talking cheap cow livers here, pal.
A top-of-the-line pound-and-a-half chunk of grade-A duck liver can
run you $65 or more. You won't find it on the menu at Denny's or at the
diner in the local truck stop.
These days it's considered trendy to slice it, sear it and serve it
up with a tangy fruit garnish. But it's usually just made into pate, so
you could think of it as fancy liverwurst for rich people.
Though it may seem hard to believe, duck livers are big business
indeed. Worldwide, foie gras is a billion dollar industry.
Ferndale's own Hudson Valley Foie Gras, one of only two foie gras
makers in the entire country, rakes in millions of dollars a year
selling its tasty liver goop to gourmet distributors and restaurants
across the United States.
That, thanks in part to California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -
and maybe our own state Legislature - is about to change.
A new California law effectively outlawing foie gras production
there and a nearly identical one currently in committee in New York's
Legislature could spell doom for the duck liver industry in the United
States.
EVERY WEEK, MORE THAN 3,000 Moulard ducks selflessly give up their
lives - and their livers - to please the palates of gourmets across
America who crave the rich, creamy taste of Hudson Valley Foie Gras.
Born in 1981, the company and its only domestic competitor,
California's Sonoma Foie Gras, account for about half the foie gras
found in the United States.
In the company's plant in rural Ferndale, a sparsely populated swath
of Catskills greenery between Monticello and Liberty, owners Izzy Yanay
and Michael Ginor and their 200 employees churn out a quarter-million
pounds of foie gras a year.
Yanay and Ginor do 90 percent of their business with distributors
who move the product along to high-end restaurants and gourmet shops
nationwide.
Their efforts to educate average consumers aside, foie gras is still
a relatively unknown treat, enjoyed by the monied and the elite but
ignored - and mispronounced - by the rest of us unwashed types.
"Sometimes at Christmas you get someone who wants to make something
special," Yanay said. "Now, in France, everyone and their mother has it
in the house. Unfortunately, we're still not in the common kitchen."
FOIE GRAS IS WELL KNOWN in some other circles, too - notably among
radical animal rights activists. The industry has been under assault
for decades.
The reason: the way foie gras is made.
In order to make top-quality foie gras, you have to force-feed the
bird a rich, fatty goop for weeks on end, making its liver swell up
like a big, fatty balloon almost 10 times normal size.
To do this, you need to insert a plastic tube down the bird's throat
two or three times a day, using compressed air to force about a pound
of food down its gullet in just a few seconds.
When the liver is big enough to make a profitable product, well,
it's lights out for Mr. Duckie.
Activists say the process is cruel, but Ginor disagrees. He admits
the 100,000 or so ducks at his Ferndale plant are doomed to an untimely
assembly-line death. It looks like it should hurt like hell, but Ginor
insists study after study has shown the ducks don't suffer from it.
"The image is that it's cruel, but it's not and we invite anyone to
come and see for themselves," Ginor said.
Not so, says Cem Aiken, a research associate for People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"I don't know of any scientific studies that show the ducks don't
suffer, and there were studies in the European Union that show they do,
and that it's painful," Akin said. "It's an insult to those poor
animals."
UNFORTUNATELY FOR THE INDUSTRY, Schwarzenegger agrees with Akin. On
Sept. 29 he signed a law banning the force-feeding of ducks to make
foie gras in California. The California law also bans the sale of duck
livers made by force feeding in the state.
The law doesn't take effect until 2012, theoretically giving the
industry more than seven years to invent a different method.
"If agricultural producers are successful in this endeavor, the ban
on foie gras sales and production in California will not occur,"
Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement.
That, Ginor says, is a pipe dream.
"Millions of dollars and French francs and euros have been spent
researching other ways to produce foie gras," Ginor said. "There is no
other way and there never has been."
New York is considering a similar bill that could mean death for
Hudson Valley Foie Gras and surrender America's foie gras industry to
competitors in Canada and France.
Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, whose district includes
the company's Ferndale plant, says she loves animals and respects
PETA's point of view, but she's dead set against a bill she says will
cost jobs and cede yet another industry to foreign competition.
"I do support the industry," she said. "It's a source of income for
many people. In this time when we're scrambling for more industry and
screaming about outsourcing it just doesn't make any sense."
For Ginor and Yanay, the California law and the New York bill hang
like twin guillotines. It's a shame, they say, that foie gras, has such
a snobby image and gets such a bum rap from Joe Six Pack and friends.
"We're very small, we're unique, we're expensive and not everyone
knows about us," Yanay said. "...We're alone and nobody really cares
about us."