In
the same train of thought, does it make you feel better that the
plump, juicy piece of canard à l’orange you’re
slicing came from a duck that never had to go through force-feeding?
Never mind the fact, of course, that it spent most of its life cooped
up in a concentration camp called “the poultry farm”
and never actually saw the light of day?
Knowing just a little… is a dangerous thing.
The bra-burning hippies of the Sixties probably knew their cause
better than many so-called animal sympathizers today. We do not
ask if Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
of California - and their many feverish supporters - organized unbiased
investigations on the foie gras production trade before calling
upon their decision to ban this age-old delicacy in their states.
However, we do ask that you, and trust that you will, hear both
sides of the story before you decide on your stand with regards
to this issue.
Foie gras, contrary to popular belief, was not Man’s creation,
but his discovery. Some 5000 years ago the Egyptians found that,
in preparation for their migratory flight at the end of the year,
ducks and geese would consume large amounts of food. Their livers,
which have the natural ability to store fat, consequently swell
up into what have been turned into unctuous dishes reserved for
the fine dining table since ancient Roman times.
Man did play with nature eventually, in the sense that instead
of waiting for the annual foie gras season, we decided to bring
the fowls’ gorge-fest to another level and to another frequency.
Yet, in its most traditional form, goose and duck farming is carried
out more religiously than business-like. The act of feeding the
ducks and geese to fatten them - known as gavage - is more an art
than wrongful application of technology; and the gaveuses - women
who usually learn the craft from their mothers and grandmothers
- are more artisans practicing an age-old craft than cold-blooded
sadists.
Food writer Gemma Driver, who visited Isabelle and Jean-Luc Viresolvit
of La Ferme des Marchandoux in Perigord - producers of artisanal
foie gras highly sought-after in Europe - gives an account of how
the poultry were bred in her story written for FrenchEntree.com.
The picture painted is idyllic: free-range ducks fed on cereals
and greens grown by Isabelle herself until the period for force-feeding,
when their diet changes to a maize porridge. “The ducks, which
are now living in straw-lined pens, are individually fed twice a
day. A motorized funnel jiggles maize down a pipe, which is carefully
and expertly inserted down the duck’s throat. Isabelle holds
the duck’s beak with one hand, and gently rubs its tummy with
the other. This takes around five seconds for each bird. Isabelle
feels that she knows and understands her ducks, and is certain that
the pipe doesn’t cause the birds any pain; she would feel
them wince, for a start… The birds are not enormously fat,
either. They can happily walk about, with every comfort (space,
companionship, water, clean straw), until the day they die.”
If that still makes you cringe, in his article for Men’s
Vogue ("Stuffed Animals"), Jeffrey Steingarten has this
to say on the issue of whether or not the birds suffer: “How
much distress does the most careful sort of tube feeding cause to
the duck? I know of only two medical or scientific attempts to answer
this question. Neither of them has been cited by animal-rights advocates,
who instead encourage us to anthropomorphize, to imagine how we
would feel getting tube-fed and fattened. But this may be the wrong
question. How would we like to be a duck under any circumstances?
How would we feel having to paddle all day on cold New England rivers
and among the sodden marshes? I wouldn't be able to take it.” |