Californians Get Free Foie Gras in France

Last month, the state of California put into effect a law originally signed in 2004 prohibiting the manufacture and sale of foie gras. Many chefs, as you could imagine, are quite up in arms about it and have been fighting to get the ban repealed. Meanwhile most have taken the French delicacy off their menus while others are ignoring the ban, hoping that regulatory agencies are too busy to chase after them and impose the $1000 fine. Still others are using loopholes to work around the restriction, by offering toast and chutney ''with complimentary foie gras'' or promoting ''BYOF,'' meaning Bring Your Own Foie. If you supply the foie gras, they'll cook it for free and charge you for the accompaniments.

California restaurateurs had until midnight July 1 to legally sell foie gras to customers. As the deadline approached, many restaurants saw an increase in sales from customers looking for their last legal taste. The Los Angeles Times reported hungry foodies embarking on "foie gras crawls" in the weeks before the ban took effect. This is the only current ban of its kind in the United States, although Chicago had a ban for a year before it was reversed.

To capitalize on the controversy--making lemonade from lemons--Jean-Claude Corda, the clever owner of the popular Bistrot des Alpilles in St. Remy de Provence is offering a free foie gras first course to any customer who shows a valid California ID. The dish, which normally sells for 14€, is served with typical accompaniments such as grilled bread and chutney. Jean-Claude buys the product from Maison Masse, a highly regarded producer in the Perigord/Dordogne region of France.

''California sees itself as a trendsetter,'' Jean-Claude says, ''and we wish to do the same in our own way by inviting Californians to discover, for free, a typically French meal, from a famous company. Maison Masse, makers of foie gras since generations, works closely with producers who love their work. And since the 'gastronomic meal of the French,' with its rituals and presentations, was registered in 2010 on UNESCO's World Heritage List of cultural treasures, we want to keep this traditional French dish in the American mentality.''

So why the controversy? At issue is the way in which foie gras--the term refers to the fattened liver of ducks and geese and the dishes made from it--is produced: the animals are force fed by tube to enlarge their livers and produce a silky texture (the practice is called gavage). As early as 2500 BC, the ancient Egyptians were fattening birds through forced overfeeding so it's hardly anything new. Still, that doesn't make it right, according to the animal-rights group PETA, which has posted a list of the five reasons to ban foie gras with several graphic photos. Detractors say these and other provocative photos circulating online come from unregulated farms in Europe....not the U.S.

Up until now there have been just three producers of fresh foie gras in the U.S.: Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras in Northern California, Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York and La Belle Farm, also in New York. (Plus, a few in Canada who export to the U.S.)  I'm told that Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras stopped production on July 1st but their website says their farm aims to be humane and that "ducks are never individually caged and roam free range for most of their lives." The company publishes a list of industry issues here, illustrating their practices and position.

Back in 2009, the Village Voice did an extensive story about how foie gras is made at Hudson Valley. In summing up her findings, the reporter wrote: ''Personally, I would avoid foie gras from the producers in France and Canada that use individual cages. The fact that some industrial farms elsewhere are making foie gras in inhumane ways doesn't mean that all foie gras production is inhumane. You can buy humanely raised chicken, or you can buy chicken that's had a nasty, brutal life. The same goes for foie gras. If I had seen with my own eyes that Hudson Valley produced foie gras by abusing ducks, this article would have turned out very differently. But that just wasn't the case.'' (You can read the story here.)

Hudson Valley (and presumably the other U.S. producers) employ animal-welfare consultants to ensure their ducks are treated, fed and slaughtered humanely.

But back to the present. The Financial Times reports that Laurel Pine, the owner of Mirepoix USA which sells foie gras and other luxury foods, moved last year from California's Napa Valley to Reno, Nevada, in anticipation of the ban.  Pine says she's planning to set up outposts along the border where Californians can legally buy foie gras...and planning to establish a courier service to deliver the product. ''In the meantime, Californian's are buying foie gras directly from me in Reno,'' she told me by email.
 

Whenever I think of foie gras, I think of my old pal Michael Ginor, the co-founder/co-owner of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the biggest foie gras producer in the country. So I rang Michael up yesterday and found him surprisingly upbeat. ''We're actually having our best year yet,'' he said. ''Because of all the PR which foie gras has received....sales are higher as awareness is heightened. And chefs in California are still finding 'creative' ways to offer foie gras to their customers so sales there have not greatly diminished.'' 

Another old friend at the foie gras forefront is Ariane Daguin; she owns D'Artagnan, the New Jersey-based purveyor of duck, foie gras, wild game and caviar, and sells to many of the top chefs in the U.S. (Ariane is also French foodie royalty, the eighth generation of a hotel/restaurant/butcher/charcutier family. Her dad, Andre, had two Michelin stars at the Hôtel de France in Auch, Gascony, and later headed the French Hotel and Restaurant Union (UMIH); he was also considered a foie gras master. Her brother Arnaud, also a chef, has a Michelin star at his guesthouse and restaurant Hegia in Hasparren, southeast of Biarritz. Her sister Anne had the bakery Le Petit Duc in St. Remy until selling it a month or two ago.)  So if anyone has a strong opinion about all this, I knew it would be Ariane. 'We've never sold as much foie gras in California as we have since the ban,'' she tells me. ''Please let the farmers do their jobs and raise ducks for foie gras the right way, humanely and without stress, as they've been doing for thousands of years. Didn't we learn anything from Prohibition?''

Ariane also told me about a pending lawsuit against the State of California as well as a major lobbying effort to push a bill in Washington that would make it impossible to interfere with the interstate commerce of agricultural products. Meanwhile “moving outside of California is not my ideal solution,” Guillermo Gonzalez of Sonoma Foie Gras told Food Arts. He's a native of El Salvador who moved to California and opened the company in 1986; he and his wife have raised two children in Sonoma. “After 26 years, we have made our lives here,'' he continues. We want to stay. It all depends on the political activity now taking place. We are in a mode of wait and see.” (Read the Food Arts story here.)

Apparently more than a dozen countries, including Britain, Germany, Israel and South Africa, have essentially outlawed the production (but not the sale or consumption) of foie gras. For now, however, France continues to view it as a traditional delicacy worth savoring in many forms. So if you love it...and you come from California...and you find yourself in St. Remy...there's a silky slab with your name on it, with compliments--and complements--at the Bistrot des Alpilles! 

Brasserie Restaurant Le Bistrot des Alpilles

15 Blvd. Mirabeau

13210 St. Remy de Provence

+33 (0)4 90 92 09 17
lebistrotdesalpilles.com

lba1@wanadoo.fr 

Photos: The foie gras, Jean-Claude Corda and the Bistrot des Alpilles.