Efforts to ban the sale of foie gras are based on a faulty understanding of the process of raising the ducks and geese used to make the item, said Ariane Daguin, the founder and CEO of D'Artagnan, a purveyor of gourmet specialty meats and other products, including foie gras.
“The vegetarian activists are trying to tell the world that raising ducks for foie gras is cruel, is inhumane, and that is just not true,” she told SFA News Daily.
Rhode Island is the latest state to propose a ban on foie gras, following similar efforts in a handful of other states and municipalities, and bans that have taken effect in several countries, including Germany, Denmark, the U.K., Italy, and others.
Foie gras producers are an easy target, Daguin said, because few people understand the force-feeding process, called gavage, that causes the ducks and geese to have swollen livers. The oversized livers—described by some animal-rights groups as “diseased”—are a natural development among some migratory birds, she said, because they help the animals survive long flights without having to land and feed on the ground.
During gavage, which takes place over the course of several days before the birds are slaughtered, they are force-fed a special diet that is poured directly into their esophagi via tubes, described in some reports as made of metal and others as made of plastic. Daguin said this process mimics the way birds are fed by their parents as chicks, and is also similar to the way birds are fed by humans when rescued from oil spills, for example.
Daguin's father, chef André Daguin, is well-known in France for his culinary expertise with foie gras and other specialties from the Gascony region, according to the D'Artagnan website.
Ariane Daguin said ancient Egyptians had discovered that ducks and geese naturally developed fatty, enlarged livers as they prepared to migrate, which yield the product's unique, rich flavor. Since that time, humans have been reproducing that effect domestically on farms in a process she insisted was not cruel to the birds.
“Ducks and geese have a very funny way to punish you when you mistreat them: They just die on you,” she said. “They don't support mistreatment.”
Animal-rights groups claim the process often injures the birds and causes distress during the feeding process.
D'Artagnan, which offers a variety of gourmet meat products not only from ducks but from game and other animals as well, focuses on products from animals that are humanely raised, Daguin said.
“It is really ironic that those vegetarian activists go after people like us,” she said. “We are not the enemies. On the contrary, we are the people who are for the small, individual family farmers who are doing things the right way. We are encouraging biodiversity, and raising animals in the right environment. They should go after the big guys, who do factory farming.”
The foie gras industry—which consists of only a handful of farms in the U.S.—has been successful in fighting proposed bans around the country, including efforts that have failed in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Chicago. Daguin said she's optimistic that the ban in New York City—set to take effect next year, will also fail on legal grounds.
In New York, she said, the industry has received support from USDA rules that prohibit municipalities from overriding the legal rights of farmers.
“The USDA has told the councilmen of New York City that they have absolutely no jurisdiction over farmers that were two and a half hours away, in upstate New York,” Daguin said. “We have a pretty good sense that we won, and that the ban will not be commencing [next] October.”
She said her company and foie gras producers invited city council members to visit the farms before they voted to ban the sale of foie gras in the city, but none accepted the offer.
A spokesperson for the New York City council could not be reached for comment.
Similarly, she said the industry is also making progress against the ban in California, which bars for the sale and production of foie gras in the state. The ban was partially lifted last year when a judge ruled that out-of-state producers could sell foie gras to California residents for their own personal use, although the ban remains in effect prohibiting restaurants and retailers from selling the item.
Since then, some additional developments have led her to believe that efforts to overturn the ban completely are making progress, Daguin said.
She's also confident that the latest effort in Rhode Island will also ultimately fail, she said.
In the meantime, small producers throughout the specialty meat industry—including rabbit, quail, and bison farmers, among others—have been hit hard by the pandemic, as much of their volume is traditionally sold through full-service restaurants.
“We are encouraged that as restaurants reopen, that business will come back,” Daguin said.
Related: Rhode Island Mulls Over Foie Gras Ban; Foie Gras Can Be Served in CA Again.
Image: D'Artagnan