Some European tastes are controversial - like our love of foie gras. This gourmet food excites emotions on all sides - from the foodies who adore it to the animal rights activists who protest so passionately against it. Christiane Warmbein explores the difficult feelings which surround the European love - and hatred - of this luxury French liver.

Photo: Mogens Engelund, Wikipedia

Foie gras with figs and onions

A serious topic this time: foie gras. A culinary subject which is discussed more passionately and controversially is hardly to be found. Gourmets adore the fat liver, where as even animal welfare activists who are normally not particularly radical tend to the product insistently, and with surprising emotion.

Foie gras is sold as a whole liver or processed as pâté, mousse or parfait. Its flavour is, unlike the sometimes quite strong one of ordinary duck or goose liver, rather buttery and rich. In most European countries, production is forbidden for the protection of animals, but nevertheless the product is sold. Especially in French cuisine, the liver is considered to be a delicacy and national cultural heritage, which caused it to be excepted from the normally quite strict French animal protection laws. Therefore, about 80% of the world's foie gras production can be found in France, (about 23 500 tons) followed by Hungary and Bulgaria. The French consume 80% of their production themselves and export the rest, mainly to Germany, Spain and the United States. There are huge campaigns by animal welfare movements to stop foie gras production and ban imports.

But what is all this excitement about? The main point of criticism is the production process.

In ancient Egypt people began to make use of the physiological capacity of migratory birds to store large amounts of fat, especially in their liver. The natural reason for this process is to enable the birds (ducks and geese) to survive the often long and demanding flights when they migrate seasonally. Slowly, the method of fattening the animals spread from ancient Egypt to Greece and Europe. It was especially popular among the Jewish population: their dietary law forebade them to mix dairy products and meat and so they had a large demand for poultry fat for cooking. It became a delicacy in Europe at the end of the 16th century, when the famous Italian cook Bartolomeo Scappi introduced it, described it and made use of it when he cooked for the pope.

Today, the fattening process takes place as follows: after several weeks inside a building, living on straw, the ducks and geese are kept outside and mainly eat grass. Afterwards, the force-feeding starts. The animals are fed two to four times a day, for about two to three weeks. The amount of food fed rises from about 250 grams at the beginning to 1000 - 2000 grams per day at the end of the process, depending on the size and weight of the animal. To achieve this, a cone with a long tube is inserted into the oesophagus through wich the feed is piped. Each feed lasts for 2-3 seconds (using modern techniques such as a pneumatic pump) or 45-60 seconds (using traditional methods). After the force-feeding, the liver has enlarged to about six to ten times the original size. At big foie gras farms, the animals are held in extra cages in which they cannot move, and the enlarged liver causes breathing problems. It pushes on other organs, so the animals are often in pain and cannot move anymore. At the final stage, some ducks use their wings to move themselves, as their body is often so heavy that it can't be held by their feet anymore. Plus, many of them suffer then the common fate of cage birds: natural preening behaviour is not possible, and the inability to move causes open pressure sores and respiratory distress. Then, they are slaughtered.

Photo: copyright free

An Egyptian depiction of force-feeding

Sounds quite brutal, doesn't it? Bad, bad French guys, hang them all and the foie gras industry!

Animal suffering is horrible. What happens in modern meat industries is the nightmare of our age and should be stopped and punished. But too simple answers to complex problems won't solve anything. So why not put aside the battle call and have a look at what's going on here?

In the western world, about 1.5-2.5% of the population are vegetarians. The rest of us consume steak, burger, chicken wings, roast pork, beef stew, milk for cornflakes, cream for sauces, eggs for breakfast and whatever else you eat. What we do not want to know is where it all comes from - that the beef for the burger might come from a cow that was used (indeed, used!) for milk production several years before being killed and wasn't even able to walk by herself to the slaughterhouse because she was too depleted. That the chicken which is now your curry for lunch might never have seen the sun. There are endless examples.

Cultural sensibility in Europe has reached an unexpected point at the moment, when it comes to violence. The positive result is that we have largely stopped bashing each other's heads in, but on the other hand, we can't bear to be aware of such things as cruelty to animals.

Many of us are not capable of bearing the ferocity of slaughter, and so suppression seems to be the ideal answer. The ludicrous result is that the meat we buy has most often no hint to the animal that died for it, in terms of how it is packaged. The awareness of the connection between one's meal and the circumstances by which it hopped onto the plate has been lost. Therefore, animal welfare movements have a hard job trying to remind us about it, especially as most of us still want to eat meat.

Photo: copyright free

A battery farm: did the chicken on your plate come from here?

When it comes to foie gras, the task of animal welfare groups is much simpler: it is a luxury product which most can't afford. Fighting and arguing against it is so much easier, as it has no effects on the daily diet of most people. So, one can salve one's conscience about the actual fact that animals are suffering for your daily meal by following the claim that foie gras production is much worse than "normal" meat production.

But is it really? Not all foie gras is produced at those huge industrial farms, as is often suggested. Conditions there are horrible, and supporting this form of production is out of the question. The things which greed for profit makes people do to animals are evidence of an emotional coldness and a lack connection with our surroundings that is extraordinary. The needless torture of living beings is definitely something worth fighting against.

But many producers are family-held farms, where the birds are taken care of with the utmost care. They can run around on the grass most of the time and due to modern feeding techniques, force-feeding is done in 2-3 seconds. Force-feeding is still force-feeding, and no matter how long it takes or what the circumstances are, it is certainly a painful treatment for ducks and geese. But what is worse, an animal that suffered for some weeks and is slaughtered and afterwards eaten with respect, joy and awareness, or an animal which suffered maybe for years and was fed with artificial food and afterwards pressed to hamburgers?

One might say that neither is ideal. It isn't, indeed. But neither is denial. What we need is honest handling of it all. And change is happening. More and more organic farms raise their animals in a natural way, without artificial food, offering enough space and fresh air. Beating the odds, a Spanish producer called "Pateria de Sousa" has even managed to produce foie gras without force-feeding. The migratory Iberian geese live in a garden Eden and eat natural food, for example fruit. After they have developed a fatty liver on their own, for their migration, they are slaughtered. The liver of those geese is so good that it won the most famous French culinary prize against all the brands of French foie gras. The production is still far too small to meet the demands of the market. But what this shows is: there is a way to satisfy both our human demand for meat (and for some: foie gras) without torturing animals.

It is the choice of each individual whether to eat meat and even foie gras. The intention of this article was to give an overview on which our personal decisions can be based. Don't follow propaganda, either from the meat industry or from animal rights campaigners. Be alert and use your brain: this will benefit both animals and humans.

As always in this column, we have some recipes for you to try. Reflecting the article's intention, here's one recipe for a foie gras starter (though you could substitute normal liver for the foie gras) and one for a vegetarian pâté, so you can choose.

Fresh foie gras with figs

Ingredients (to serve four):

About 400 g of raw foie gras, 8 big dried figs, 100 ml honey, 100 ml muscat wine, 50 ml Cognac, salt and pepper.

Boil a small pot of water. Cut the raw foie gras into 8 pieces and poach them quickly (about 10 seconds is enough) in the water. This procedure will prepare the foie gras for further cooking. Let it cool down and store it wrapped in aluminium foil in the fridge. Salt and pepper it.

Meanwhile mix the honey with 200 ml water, add the muscat wine, Cognac and figs. Let the mixture stew on a very low heat for about one hour. Afterwards, let it cool down in the fridge for one night.

The next day, take the figs out of the juice. Cut deeply into each one in the shape of a cross - don't cut all the way through, just so that it opens in a star shape. Take four small baking dishes and arrange two figs in each. Bake for 10 minutes in the oven at 170° C. Take out of the oven and place one piece of foie gras on each fig. Cover it with the remaining juice and put it back in the oven for 15 minutes.

Italian lentil pâté

Ingredients (to serve 12):

3-5 tbsp olive oil, 1 small onion (chopped), 2 tsp balsamic vinegar, 1-2 tsp maple syrup, 200 g cooked lentils (cooked in vegetable stock with 1 clove of garlic), 100 g pine nuts, lightly toasted, 25 g chopped fresh parsley, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp dried thyme, salt and pepper.

Warm 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the vinegar and maple syrup and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion is completely soft and caramelised.

Blend the caramelised onions, lentils, pine nuts, remaining 2-4 tbsp olive oil, parsley, oregano and thyme in a food processor until completely smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.