Article: One man’s meat

Monday July 27, 2009

By JANE F. RAGAVAN

The practice of force-feeding an animal for the sole pleasure of the palate has come under criticism from animal welfare groups.

IN any killing of animals for food, there is a certain degree of cruelty, a fact that has led many people to stop eating meat.

There's also the environmental concern in animal agriculture, which is the main source of methane worldwide, a significant contributor to global warming.

This, however, is not a polemic for vegetarianism, despite the proven benefits to our bodies and the planet (the food must be organic, though), or a question of morality. The fact of the matter is that one can be an animal lover and still eat meat.

Feeding time: An employee at the Ferme Basque in St-Urbain, Quebec, Canada, feeding a Mulard duck for the production of foie gras. Mulard ducks – a cross-breed between a male Muscovy duck and a common female duck – are the preferred species for the delicacy.

Standard animal agriculture practices leave much to be desired and many informed meat-eaters draw the line at what they consider unfair treatment of an animal before it ends up on their tables.

The matter is especially contentious when it comes to gourmet food. Certainly, there appears to be no bigger controversy than the production of foie gras (pronoun­ced "fwah grah") – duck or goose liver that is fattened by force-feeding.

This is done by feeding the birds through a tube shoved down their throats. Anti-foie gras campaigners say this is painful, cruel and something the industry wants to hide. This has also led many animal rights groups to go undercover to film the process. These videos can be viewed on their websites, along with images of unkempt and dead birds.

As a counter to such horrifying footage, you have people like celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain taking a camera crew to a farm to show "happy ducks" scurrying to be fed from the tube.

So what is the truth?

Frenchman Jean Michel Fraisse says the feeding process is real, but is incensed at what he describes as manipulation and "a campaign by puritans".

A piece of foie gras from a Mulard duck.

"There is nothing to hide. Sure there are dead ducks, as in any farm, but these are images of one or two birds and they (the activists) make it appear as if that is what happens to all the birds," says the managing director of HTC in Asia Sdn Bhd, which runs the Kuala Lumpur-based French Culinary School in Asia.

"There is no cruelty (in producing foie gras)," he emphasises. "Just think, if you put stress on an animal it will affect the taste of the meat, and no one wants that."

Foie gras production has been banned in at least 15 countries, including Britain, Switzerland, Germany (which, in 2002, became the first country to grant animals a constitutional right) and Israel, which was formerly the world's largest producer of foie gras.

This fact, says a local food blogger who wishes to go by the initials WMW, clearly sends the message that there are concerns over foie gras production.

"It must be causing enough of an impact for these governments to do something about it," says WMW who has tried foie gras but having learned of how it is produced, swore never to eat it again.

Feeding off the fat

Foie gras, designated by law as part of French cultural and gastronomic heritage, is made by force-feeding corn-based meal to farmed ducks and geese over a few months so that their livers swell with fat.

Historically, foie gras was produced from geese, but today 96% of the delicacy comes from ducks.

The final weight of each lobe of raw foie gras is between 600g and 1kg. The price fluctuates according to quality and how it is prepared. At Rougie, a famous French supplier of gourmet specialities, the products can start from as low as ‚7 (RM35) for a 50g block of duck foie gras. Local restaurants usually don't price their foie gras main courses for less than RM50 a plate.

Fine food: Torchon de Foie Gras et Homard Canadien, or lobster wrapped in duck liver – created by celebrity chef Emmanuel Stroobant, the Chef in Black

France is the world's leading producer of foie gras, turning out some 18,450 tonnes a year, or almost 80% of the world total of around 23,500 tonnes. Most of the French production is consumed by the domestic market, much of it during the festive season.

Hungary and Bulgaria are also major producers, Canada has a thriving industry, and China has become a sizeable producer in recent years.

The objection to foie gras centres on force feeding, or gavage, which is necessary for the production of the fatty liver.

This is done after the duck reaches around 12 weeks old (before this, it lives a relatively free-range life) and is carried out for the final two to three weeks of its life by inserting a tube – "like a petrol pump", says Fraisse – carrying cornmeal down its throat. Each duck is fed about 450g of food two to three times a day and each feeding lasts under 10 seconds.

Gavage takes advantage of birds' natural tendency to gorge before migration and was practised in classical Rome and ancient Egypt. Gorging, however, only results in the liver doubling in size, not 10 times as in force feeding.

The concentration of fat – 50% to 60% at the end of the process – gives the liver its distinctive taste. This, to those who take pleasure in eating foie gras, is a case of the end justifying the means.

Coming from the south of France, Fraisse, 45, was "born with touching foie gras", which he considers the flagship of French gastronomy.

"The ducks enjoy the force feeding, and become addicted to it," he claims.

"If you don't see it, you will think it is cruel, but it is no different than other types of farming," says Fraisse, who has led several groups of Malaysians, including students and journalists, on tours of foie gras production facilities in France.

"In fact, if you want to see cruelty to animals, just go to any chicken farm in Malaysia, any type of farming in Australia that raises grain-fed beef.

(The Department of Veterinary Services guidelines on rearing commercial broiler chickens in Malaysia recommend suitable-sized barns having an area of 1sqft per bird. That's only slightly larger than a sheet of A4-size paper.)

"I would rather be a duck in France than a chicken in Malaysia," says Fraisse.

To this, WMW says: "But we don't have the luxury of choice here," referring to intensive chicken farming. "If we choose to eat chicken, we have to take whatever we can get."

Sitting duck

To be fair, there are first-hand accounts from unbiased journalists about foie gras duck farms in the United States, like the one Bourdain visited in New York State, which describe birds grouped in pens large enough to comfortably move about in during the force-feeding period.

Barns are air-conditioned and equipped with electronic devices for temperature, humidity and oxygen control. With each worker caring for 300 to 350 birds and receiving a bonus for low mortality and good quality livers, the handling of the ducks is done carefully.

There is also plenty of proof of reprehensible acts of cruelty. Particularly disturbing is undercover footage from an industrial farm in Canada and another in the south-west of France. The films show ducks housed in gloomy sheds, brutally manhandled and placed in wire cages so small they cannot move at all for the two weeks or so that they are force-fed.

Some cannot lift their heads or lie dead with cornmeal clotted in their bills. Witnesses say they have seen dirty birds being attacked by rats and suffering from diarrhoea, incessant panting and lesions. Activists refer to the unnaturally engorged liver as "diseased".

Protestors denounce force-feeding as a painful process which often leaves ducks with throat lacerations and ruptured livers, and cause them to vomit the surfeit of cornmeal that is pumped into them. The foie gras lobby, however, insists that the oesophagus of the duck is hard and the birds have no gag reflex.

In Malaysia, foie gras is often in the spotlight but only on restaurant menus. There have been murmurs of local opposition to the product, mostly in the form of letters to the press, from individuals and organisations. Environment watchdog Sahabat Alam Malaysia has called for a ban on the import of food products containing foie gras and for hoteliers and restaurateurs to "enlighten the consumers or food lovers on the needless suffering of birds for a mere palatable dish."

With so many food-related issues to worry about, is foie gras simply an easy target for activists and economic sanctions, and an attack on those who can afford the luxury?

Fraisse seems to think so.

"Why focus on foie gras? What about shark fin and live fish in (restaurant) aquarium, which are harvested using cyanide (this stuns the fish so they are easily caught)? That is more cruel.

"We should be more concerned about the things we eat every day than what we eat once in a while. People should be more worried about molecular gastronomy (because of the chemicals that are used)."

For him, it comes down to choice. "You can choose not to eat foie gras. Make your own opinion, investigate yourself, do not rely on the opinion of one person."

WMW agrees that it is about choice – informed choice.

"Most people are not aware of what happens. But once you are aware ... well, it's up to the individual," she says, adding that she knows people who continue to consume foie gras despite this knowledge, even making light of the production process.

In the end, you may defend the way you live or change it. For the vast majority, however, it would be just as important to rally against what we can hope to change in this country – for example, battery cages and intensive farming – so that animal welfare is protected, the benefits of which we will enjoy.

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Lifestyle: Focus 27 July 2009