Foie gras: an irreplaceable taste, or an ethical faux pas?

In England we have always had a complex relationship with the French: there is no nation that we revel so much in mocking, but it can’t be denied, we worship French cuisine. “French” as an epithet for just about anything in the kitchen is a sign of quality that cannot be contended; French bread, French wine, “Oh, it’s just something I picked up in a little village in the South of France last summer.” Indeed, to call any foodstuff by its French name makes it seem instantly more refined; baguette trumps bread stick; herbes de Provence trump mixed herbs.

A prime example of a food that is better called by its French name is foie gras. However, with foie gras it is not a case of glamorising a bland English name by 'Francocising' it, but rather a case of calling it by its French name because the English name is so repellent. If you were to be thorough in your translated description of foie gras, you would have to call it “force-fed duck/goose liver pate”, which is a rather a mouthful, and an unappetising mouthful at that. The concise, literal translation of foie gras: 'fatty liver' is hardly less graphically unpleasant. “Foie gras”, with its duo-syllabic, rhymingly poetic appellation brings to mind the rustic simplicity of the Provencal countryside, or the smokey Parisian artisan life, taking you away to this inviting other world. Sitting down to a plate of fatty liver, however, is like eating chicken while watching a documentary about battery hens. It’s just a bit too real.

How foie gras is made
In order to make foie gras, metal tubes are forced down birds’ throats, and grain and fat are mechanically pumped into them. This eventually causes their livers to swell to 10 times the natural size, not to mention the damage it does to their stomachs and other organs in the process. Birds being fattened to make foie gras are fed kilos of this mix often several times a day. Considering a goose naturally weighs between 3-9 kilograms, this is a substantial portion of their own body weight. While birds are being fattened they are kept individually in small cages, to restrain them during the force feeding. Each feeding takes less than a minute, as the food is rapidly pumped down the birds’ gullets. 

There are various different types of foie gras:

• Foie gras entier is an entire liver with out any additives. It has a uniform, dense texture. 
• Bloc de foie gras is a processed liver that must have at least 90% foie gras, with added seasoning and water. It is less expensive than foie gras entire, and has a coarser texture.

Foie gras can be bought either fully cooked (cuit), which can be stored for several years, raw (frais), or half cooked (mi-cuit), which don’t last so long.

Foie gras can be made form either goose of duck livers. Both are equally traditional, although slightly different in texture and taste. What makes these two birds suitable for making foie gras, is not that their livers taste any different to other birds’ livers, but that the birds’ necks naturally expand, accommodating the tubes that are inserted for force feeding.

For all types of foie gras, however, the initial fattening method is the same. Yet despite all this, foie gras is an enormously popular luxury item and has been deemed by Gordon Ramsey, in a particularly controversial episode of The F Word: a “chef’s ultimate ingredient”. Many celebrated restaurants serve foie gras, including the Ritz, the Fat Duck, Tom Aiken’s, and of course Ramsey’s own restaurants. However, while foie gras is still enjoyed by many, there is a lot of noise being made at the moment about the delicacy, and efforts being made by many to raise awareness of how foie gras is made.

Campaigning against foie gras
PeTA are currently running a series of campaigns, collaborating with celebrities such as Kate Winslet and Tamara Ecclestone, who have spoken out against fois gras. Sir Roger Moore also teamed up with PeTA in persuading Selfridges to stop selling foie gras. According to Sir Roger, "There is absolutely no debate about whether foie gras is cruel,” - an opinion which is being shared by increasingly more people.

The production of foie gras is illegal in the UK and recently even the sale of foie gras has been outlawed in various areas including York and Eastbourne. Paul Blanchard, a former member of the York Labour party who was the driving force behind getting foie gras banned in York, spoke to iLoveMyGrub about foie gras: “It is an absolutely disgusting product. Poor ducks and geese are literally force—fed with a steel pipe, called a gavage, which deliberately creates an illness in their liver, engorging it to ten times its normal size. The can’t walk properly, can’t breathe and suffer constant pain. It should have no place in a civilised society.”

However, this is not just a case of the logic of ethics ruling triumphant - there is another side to the argument. Foie gras has been an established food stuff for centuries, and it has a flavour and texture that are inimitable. For a chef like Ramsay, who uses foie gras, an outright ban would take away an irreplaceable product from his arsenal of ingredients.

There have been attempts to rear fois gras birds ethically (surprisingly, there have even been attempts at producing vegan foie gras). In 2007, Spanish farmer Eduardo Sousa began producing fois gras by allowing the birds to eat as much as they liked, unforced, over autumn, when they were naturally trying to fatten themselves up for winter. Sousa’s foie gras won an award for excellence at Paris International Food Salon, and his technique is being used by British farmers, who have branded their own substitute “faux gras” (sold in Waitrose around Christmas time). However, this is not yet widely available enough for large-scale commercial use, and not everyone agrees that it is a suitable substitute.

While there is so much to say against foie gras, the very fact that people are so keen to imitate it, and to create a substitute, is testament to how highly it is regarded by some in the food world. It is so steeped in tradition, so richly associated with centuries of decadence, luxury and high society that it is hard to disassociate it from its own rose-tinted heritage, and see it simply as the fruit of a cruel procedure. There will always be a debate between those who put taste above everything, serving fois gras in spite of how it is produced, and those for whom the knowledge of how it is produced deems foie gras a morally deplorable delicacy. Either way, it is important to realise that “foie gras” is not just some mysterious, untranslatable word that sounds so alluringly French, that its actual meaning is overlooked. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and fatty liver by any other name is still the glutted liver of a force-fed bird.

Written by: Emily Boyd