DALE'S DISH

Debate over foie gras heats up in Austin

Protesters threaten to picket restaurants that retain liver dish on the menu

By Dale Rice
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Delicacy or disgusting? Appealing cuisine or abject cruelty?

No dish currently elicits more polarizing views than foie gras, the fatted liver of ducks and geese that has been considered one of the finest and most luxurious taste experiences for centuries.

Now a target for animal rights activists, foie gras is being labeled as a mean-spirited depravity by those who are seeking to outlaw its production — and thus eliminate its consumption from the world's fine-dining scene. It's a movement that has made headway in parts of Europe, the state of California and the city of Chicago.

It's about to become an issue in Austin, where protesters are threatening to picket a small Congress Avenue restaurant if it doesn't agree to take foie gras off the menu.

"I'm trying to get as many restaurants as I can to stop serving foie gras," says Noah Cooper of the Central Texas Animal Defense, an Austin-based group of about 200 members who also decry the use of fur in clothing, animals in the circus and inhumane farming conditions.

"When you think about it, it's fatty liver," Cooper says. "You're inducing a disease in ducks — something that in any other animal you'd seek treatment from a veterinarian."

Not so, says Parind Vora, chef-owner of Restaurant Jezebel and one of the first foie gras targets of Cooper and his colleagues. Vora, who completed three years of medical school before going into cooking, contends that a fatty liver in ducks is not a disease.

In a way, both are correct.

Susan Cooper, a wildlife scientist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at Texas A&M University, says the liver is not diseased in the sense it could spread an illness to humans. However, she says, the fatty liver would cause distress in the birds and ultimately lead to their demise if they weren't slaughtered first.

Arguments about disease aside, the protestors and defenders of foie gras don't see eye-to-eye on much else, including whether the care and feeding of the birds constitutes cruelty.

There's little argument that methods used in the past, including the way in which the birds were caged for feeding, formed an inhumane approach.

Whether today's methods are more humane is open to debate. The birds, which roam in pens, are each fed several pounds of feed a day – mostly corn – through tubes inserted in their throats. Within weeks, their livers grow from a couple of ounces up to a pound and a half, becoming largely fat. It's a process that happens in the last two to six weeks of the birds' lives.

"You are forcing a metal pipe down their throats to produce a delicacy," Cooper says. "So often, the pipes rip through their throats. It's archaic."

He cites online, undercover video investigations to support his point.

But Vora, who made an unannounced visit to one of the major U.S. producers of foie gras, Hudson Valley Foie Gras, says he did not find animals being treated cruelly.

"I saw the feeding process," Vora says. "The birds did not seem stressed."

That assessment is shared by two highly respected, award-winning cookbook authors who also have been eyewitnesses to the feeding process, which is called "gavage" in French.

James Peterson, writing in his cookbook "Glorious French Food," says, "It does indeed seem cruel, but I've seen gavage being performed and it is clearly something that geese, which were what I saw, and presumably ducks, can't get enough of, the sight of the funnel almost prompting a stampede in its direction."

Madeleine Kamman, in "The New Making of a Cook," writes that she found that the birds, "contrary to what one might imagine, always seem eager to receive their patée of corn kernels, pork fat and salted water and push at one another for access to the feeder ... "

Good or bad, it's a process that has been going on for millennia. The feeding is depicted in Egyptian art from 300 B.C. and is a well-documented technique used by the Romans, who fatted the birds on figs.

But that doesn't mean foie gras is going to rest well in the 21st century. California has passed a law banning the production and sale of foie gras beginning in 2012 and Chicago last summer outlawed the sale of foie gras, a measure that Mayor Richard Daley has ridiculed and predicts soon will be repealed.

In Austin, the Central Texas Animal Defense is taking its campaign straight to restaurant owners, with Cooper writing recently to 15 of them who serve foie gras in an effort to get them to reconsider the practice.

So far, he says, he's received mostly positive feedback.

Cooper reported that Josh Watkins, executive chef of the Driskill Grill, told him he was taking foie gras off the menu and Ron Weiss, co-owner of Jeffrey's, said he would review the issue. Others said they would reflect on the information he supplied, Cooper said.

Watkins, who loves to cook and eat foie gras, is phasing out the fatty liver.

"Upon further review I'm seeing it in a different light," he says. "I've seen the videos and how they're being raised. I don't want anyone to come into the restaurant and have negative feelings because of something on the menu. I think it's the right thing to do."

Weiss examined the issue and reached the opposite conclusion.

"The bottom line is there's no scientific evidence that there is cruelty to the animals," he says. Acknowledging he does not have first-hand experience in foie gras production, he says, "I have no desire to put these farmers out of business based on what I know at this point."

Vora, however, did not respond to Cooper's entreaties and the activist is threatening to picket Jezebel, an upscale establishment that opened last year at 914 Congress Ave.

The chef, who considers himself environmentally friendly and who uses organic produce and seafood acquired only through sustainable fishing methods, says he has no intention of removing foie gras from his menu.

"To me," he says, "foie gras is a requisite in a fine-dining restaurant. It's like truffles and aged cheeses. That's what this restaurant is about: having luxury and being pampered with flavorful food."

That's a position shared by others, such as Jeff Blank, chef-owner of Hudson's on the Bend, who currently is serving seared foie gras atop a cinnamon gordita drizzled with mango and tamarind sauces and finished with a red onion-jalapeño marmalade.

Blank contends that fattening ducks before slaughter is akin to the methods used to produce a good steak.

"I don't see any difference in the feeding of geese and ducks than I do corn-fed beef in the feedlots," he says.

Blank discounts the frequent entreaties to stop serving foie gras that he receives over the Internet and says he believes the birds are treated well and that he welcomes the development of more humane ways to fatten the ducks and geese.

But Cooper isn't buying that approach.

"People are under the impression there is some sort of humane foie gras," he says. "There is no humane way to force-feed an animal. As long as you are force-feeding the animal, it's inherently inhumane."

Cooper won't have an easy time using that argument on chefs like Blank, who views the protesters as extremists.

"It's on our menu," Blank says. "We serve it, and I'm not bashful about it."

drice@statesman.com; 445-3859