California’s two-and-a-half year prohibition of the sale of foie gras ended this week, as a federal judge decided that the ban was unconstitutional.
The United States Department of Agriculture has its own rules regarding the sale of poultry, and they preempt what states have to say on the matter. However, production of food by force-feeding poultry remains illegal in the state.
Eater broke the news Wednesday, after being contacted by enthusiastic chefs who had lobbied to serve the fatty duck liver delicacy. (Foie gras can also be made from goose liver, but in the U.S. it’s pretty much always duck.) It was then good enough to post the full court decision.
Many California chefs were thrilled with the news. SFGate reported that restaurants across the Bay Area were rewriting their menus to include foie gras, including a list of restaurants “that immediately began serving the delicacy after the judge’s decision to strike down California’s ban.”
Some may wonder how chefs had the expensive, perishable product on hand, since its sale was prohibited. While chefs generally declined to discuss such details of their business, it’s possible that they followed the lead of Chicago chefs, who endured a foie gras ban between 2006 and 2008. Although they couldn’t sell the liver, no one could stop them from giving it away to friends, VIPs and the like.
Of course, not everyone was thrilled with the ruling.
Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for a boycott of the product and organized a protest outside Hot’s Kitchen, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that resulted in the ban’s reversal. Gawker called anyone who ate foie gras a word that violates NRN’s standards of decency.
Matt Gross, writing for Medium, said whether you’re for or against eating foie gras (he’s for it), the issue provides an opportunity to discuss the ethics of what we eat.
Although people may not pay attention to how the pigs or chickens or cows that they eat have lived their lives or met their demise, “[n]o one orders foie gras without knowing what it is or where it comes from. As such, it’s a direct opportunity to be ethical about meat-eating. Not that choosing one way is ethical while the other way is unethical. Rather, this is about the process of ethics.”
Gross said the decision provides the opportunity for people to examine what they are and are not comfortable with when it comes to how their food is made.
Commenters on the Eater story were divided on whether foie gras production was a form of torture or perfectly reasonable animal husbandry, but one pro-foie-gras reader posted a Serious Eats story from 2010 defending how foie gras is made.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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