By Michael Gougis - Contributing Writer

February 14, 2012 - Foie gras is not your everyday food. Made from the liver of a duck or a goose, it is an ancient ‘delicacy,’ a rich, fatty food the French claim is part of the country’s gastronomical heritage.

But its method of production is controversial, to say the least. Several countries have banned the method used to produce the food, and several high-end restaurants and food chains refuse to sell or serve it.

Back in 2004, California lawmakers enacted a ban on the production and sale of foie gras (French for “fat liver”). The effective date on the ban was delayed for nearly eight years. With that date – July 1, 2012 – rapidly approaching, California restaurateurs are mounting a last-ditch effort to overturn the ban.

“What we’re trying to protect is the aspect of free will and an age-long philosophy that wildlife as well as raised animals can be ethically treated and allow us to be creative from the culinary point of view,” says Michael Dene, owner of Michael’s on Naples Ristorante in Long Beach.

“We are talking about something that is hundreds of years old, that the Romans did, and we can do it ethically and humanely. Why should we stop doing it now? Why should we stop when the rest of the world is enjoying it?”

But the rest of the world is not enjoying it, and bans of the sale and production of foie gras are spreading, says Lindsay Rajt, associate director of campaigns and outreach for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

“Other countries have banned this process. The ban is the way of the future, as people learn about the cruelty involved. I think future generations are going to look back at this process and be appalled that this ever took place. The chefs can throw all the temper tantrums they want, but this is the way of the future,” she says.

The production of foie gras can be traced back to ancient Greece, although it is typically associated with French cuisine – the French are the world’s largest producers of the dish.

The name – “fat liver” – provides a clue as to how it is produced. In short, foie gras producers stuff the birds, inserting a feeding tube down their throats two to three times a day. A mixture of corn and fat is pumped down the throat – the process takes about two to three seconds if a pneumatic device is used, as it is in France.

Over the course of 12 to 18 days, depending on the type of bird, this dramatically enlarges the animal’s liver, from which the foie gras comes.

The source of the controversy becomes obvious.

Critics call the process cruel and a procedure that can injure the animal. Supporters say they are doing nothing that harms the animal – after all, a duck, they point out, can swallow a whole fish – and that ducks and geese gorge themselves in nature in preparation for migration.

In recent years, several countries have banned the practice of force-feeding animals for the purposes of creating foie gras.

Back in 2003, animal rights activists sued Sonoma Foie Gras, run by Guillermo Gonzalez, an El Salvador immigrant who moved to California in the mid 1980s and began his foie gras operation. The issue soon erupted into – literally – an international debate. The president of the French association that produces foie gras was quoted in a British newspaper as saying, “Let the Americans eat their hamburgers, and in France we’ll eat our foie gras.”

The next year, Senate Bill 1520 was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill banned the practice of “force feed[ing of] a bird for the purpose of enlarging the bird’s liver beyond normal size” and the sale of any product that resulted from this process.

But the bill did not go into effect immediately. Gonzalez said in a letter to Schwarzenegger during the debate that he hoped that in the ensuing seven years that “science and government (would reach) the conclusion that the methods used in our foie gras production are acceptable, as non-injurious and within the normal tolerable manipulation accepted in all animal agriculture.”

The Coalition for Humane and Ethical Farming Standards (C.H.E.F.S), of which Dene is a member, is urging California residents to contact their lawmakers to overturn the ban.

The group says, in its literature, that “a significant amount of information has emerged since 2004 that . . . shows that foie gras can be produced ethically and humanely.”

The group supports hand-feeding birds raised on a free range, as opposed to the machine feeding of caged birds. While hand-feeding still requires the use of a tube inserted into the bird’s throat, unlike the pneumatic method of feeding the birds, the food is dropped, not pressure-fed into the animal, Dene says.

Dene listed several other reasons he and other high-end restaurateurs feel the ban is a bad idea:

• It creates a precedent for government to dictate food and lifestyle choices.
• A black market will spring up to supply the demand for the banned food. “Passionate chefs serving passionate clients will wind up finding a way to find it. Costs will be extraordinarily high. The protections for animals will go away,” Dene says.
• It puts California restaurants at a competitive disadvantage compared to restaurants in neighboring states, putting the businesses and jobs associated with high-end dining at risk.

PETA’s Rajt dismissed the movement as utterly out of touch with the majority of California residents, and called contentions that the ban would cost California jobs and businesses “absurd.”

“I think the key thing to remember is that this is a group of chefs. The people who are angry are the producers and the chefs,” Rajt says. “If you talk to people on the street, they don’t think it should be legal to serve the diseased organ of a force-fed bird as a delicacy.

Innovative chefs already have come up with substitutes for foie gras that are healthier and do not involve feeding an animal by inserting a tube down its throat.

“We’ll move on to the next delicacy. We’ve seen major innovations in the culinary arts, and we will continue to do so,” Rajt says.