Sitting ducks
Stein is the public’s darling, but not even he could escape the passions inflamed by foie gras production. And it’s not just an English phenomenon: the controversy over this unctuous, almost obscenely rich morsel – the name literally means “fatty liver” – has raged increasingly furiously over the last decades, to the point where the ethics of eating it are almost the first thing many of us think of. Musings over whether it will be sautéed whole or made into a pâté; paired with a great Sauternes or an unusual cider? These come second.
In many countries you don’t even have those choices, as both selling and production are illegal. Though the controversy locally is not quite as hot, many South African restaurants have stopped offering the item. One of Cape Town’s best inner-city restaurateurs tells me that since last year he no longer serves foie gras, after over a thousand letters of vitriol, from public and animal rights groups alike, simply wore him down.
Given the relative public apathy over most other animal rights issues, the brouhaha is curious, though many believe the contention around this morsel is bound up with class politics. The delicacy has always nestled in the same gilt-edged domain as caviar, lobster and similarly elitist mouthfuls – only in France is it more widely and more casually dispensed – and there’s no doubt that outrage against the eating habits of an exclusive minority does seem to be of a somehow nobler sort than outrage against the “unassuming” meats that are most people’s staples.
Then, too, its very taste and texture – the buttery too-muchness of the thing – seems to speak of excess and gluttony in a way that goes well beyond the message invoked by lobster, fine wines et al. Still, when you look at who in the world is actually eating it, the global concern is surprising: for centuries France has been at the heart of foie gras production. Not only does it still make 78% of the world’s foie gras (annual global production being approximately 8 500 tonnes), it consumes even more than this, importing the deficit. This fact alone makes any stance on the stuff an unavoidably political one.
Opposers say gavage is amongst the cruellest activities
visited upon farmed animals. At the other extreme,
we have the macho posturings of the AA Gill-types, who
voice the (by now somewhat tired) reactionary “kill it
and grill it” stance, almost as a sort of attention-getting
ploy.
For most of its long life, the fatted liver was fairly
controversy-free, though it was almost always the food
of the elite. The process of force-feeding geese and ducks
through a tube has its roots in Egypt, around 2500 BC,
making this a delicacy with one of the oldest heritages.
It’s assumed that the Egyptians noted the pre-migratory gluttony of geese and decided to take advantage of this natural behaviour. They may have been fattening the goose for the liver alone, or it may have been about enhancing all edible parts. Once the practice of gavage had spread to the Roman Empire, though, we know that the liver was the focus of the fattening-up process. Most European languages have the Romans to thank for the root of their word for all animal liver. The birds were very often fed figs, and the fruit became closely associated with that part of the anatomy: the Italian fegato, the French foie, the Portuguese fegato and others all stem from the Roman word for figs, ficus.
The modern foie gras bird – which, since the 1950s is far more likely to be duck than goose – is not likely to happen upon a fig. The diet is one of grain-meal (bound with fat) to facilitate feeding, and is introduced through a metal tube pushed some way down the bird’s gullet, a couple of times a day for around the last 12 days to three weeks of its life. The feeding, usually with a pneumatic pump, takes about three seconds per bird. Sounds ghastly, but also mercifully short.
To judge the process first hand is tricky – the only local foie gras producer closed down after some bad press from, current affairs TV programme Carte Blanche.
Some say the birds’ natural pre-migratory habits make them physiologically suitable for force-feeding, but this is fallacious as the breed most commonly used is a cross between the male Muscovy and the female Pekin duck, neither of which exhibits pre-migratory bingeing. Certainly, though, the presence of a naturally expanding, cuticle-lined oesophagus, which allows whole food to be swallowed and stored almost as per snakes, should stop us from imposing human notions of what force-feeding by tube might be like. The discomfort of a swollen liver is also raised as an objection (for some diners, what’s off-putting is not the process, but the fact that the fattiness we relish is simply the evidence of an organ in a very bad state).
To complicate matters, foie gras is farmed in different ways. Certain birds – mainly geese – live outside for much of their lives, and are only inside for gavage. Others live cooped up from beginning to end. There are also certain farms producing “ad libitum” foie gras, which involves no force-feeding, but which results in a liver only about three times larger than usual, instead of the six to 10 times growth of “real” foie gras. But can any local restaurant tell you which of these products they’re using? Unlikely.
The middle-ground foie gras defender holds the position – arguably more logical and thoughtful than either the anti-foie gras activists or the deliberately controversial kill-it-and-grill-it brigade – that there are perhaps worthier (or as worthy) targets, if we’re talking ethical animal farming.
In terms of numbers, it’s a big battle for a truly minute number of beasts, compared to poultry, bovine or pig production. But numbers aside, we travel a dodgy and pot-holed road when we try to make comparisons between the many and varied forms of cruelty which our industrial farming methods visit on animals. Not only because it’s about comparing apples with pears, but also because, honestly, most of us are so far removed from any of the processes that we’re comparing blind.
And yet it’s tricky to not go down this road. What precisely are the horrors visited on the average battery chicken? What of industrially reared pigs – animals with a vastly superior intelligence to ducks and which somehow survive in an area fractionally larger than their own bodies for months?
Vegetarians, exempt from involvement in both foie gras and industrial pig rearing, may not be aware that the life of the average industrial-dairy cow is sometimes harsher than that of a beef cow, and that many of these cows, when no longer good milk producers, are headed for the long truck drive to the abattoir anyway. And looking at duck farming alone, anyone who’s done a bit of googling on the production details of duck-down duvets and pillows might well give up their feathered bed quicker than foie gras.
Some argue that the taste simply doesn’t warrant the process. Well, this is hardly the point, but it must be said that as with most “luxury” foods – and prawns must be the top example – indifferent versions are often the problem. There’s foie gras and then there’s foie gras. I’ve had some indifferent foie gras prepared indifferently but, oh, when it’s good it’s godly: a small seared nugget of the stuff served with caramelised apple slices, which I ate years ago at Pretoria’s wonderful La Madeleine, was good enough to shed tears over.
At the end of the day, perhaps the issues around foie gras should, more than anything else, be seen as a reminder of how insanely and unhealthily disengaged we are from the means of almost all our food production. The process is certainly not pretty, but is it any uglier than the facts behind any industrial animal farming? Most of us will never know.
Andrea Burgener is a food writer and chef.
She owned and ran the Johannesburg
restaurants Superbonbon and Deluxe
in Johannesburg, and has also worked
as a food stylist, television food
presenter and restaurant consultant.
