These are dark times for foie gras eaters in the US. In August, Chicago banned the sale of products resulting from the forced feeding of geese or ducks. Legislation to halt the production of foie gras, if not the eating of it, is at various stages in seven states, including California, New Jersey and New York.
This has caused anguish. Anthony Bourdain, the chef and author, said a ban in New York would be "a bomb" on the restaurant scene. "Foie gras is a primary colour in the flavour spectrum that we use in the kitchen," he complained. "To ask chefs to cook without that is to ask a painter to not use the colour blue." Two Chicago restaurants have already had their store-cupboards shaken down by police, and the debate is getting hotter. Chasing the story, the Chicago Sun-Times ran the glorious headline: "Jewish leaders: Overturning foie gras ban could anger God." The same paper published a column of "Faux foie gras" recipes, including spinach and pimiento pâtés. This may have swung popular sentiment back in favour of goose livers.
Could such a thing happen here? Britain loves foie gras: imports have risen steadily since the 1990s and few ambitious chefs fail to sport it on their menus. Such is the demand, worldwide, that some French producers have set up in China. France is the origin of about three quarters of the world's foie gras, and France is now eating, at 19,000 tonnes a year, fractionally more than it produces. In 2005, France exported 2,217 tonnes of foie gras crus and another 887 tonnes blended into pâtés. But to satisfy the domestic appetite—Christmas isn't Christmas in France without foie gras—France imported 3,350 tonnes, mainly from eastern Europe.
Yet foie gras is a prime target of the animal welfare lobby, and in 2004 the European commission recommended that member states find a more humane process than the gavage, the traditional force-feeding of ducks and geese to fatten their livers. The debate hinges on whether foie gras is, as some claim, "the only food produced by torture"; or merely, as CIA interrogation experts might put it, an enhanced food-production technique involving no unnatural practice in that it merely exploits the propensity of migrating birds to fatten themselves before transcontinental journeys. And that comes down to whether you believe hepatic steatosis—the extreme fattening of the liver resulting from the short period of excessive feeding—is a pathological condition or a normal and reversible one. As with most debates in food science, there are those arguing it either way.
But the European commission's scientific committee on animal health and welfare did come out against foie gras in 1998, pointing out, notably, that bird mortality was ten to 20 times higher than normal during the gavage weeks. The practice thus appears to contravene both the 1976 European convention on the welfare of farmed animals and a July 1998 EU directive prohibiting feeding them in a way that might "cause unnecessary suffering or injury." The welfare lobby has been awaiting legislation to put an end to production ever since.
How likely is that? With the accession to the EU of the world's second largest producer, Hungary, it is less likely than ever. The commission's 2019 deadline for the discovery of alternative fattening methods is no more than a recommendation, and although Poland, Denmark, Germany and Norway have already banned force-feeding of geese, there seems to be no significant pressure to do it in the countries that matter. In France, consumption is growing and only Brigitte Bardot is opposed to it. The French farm lobby appears to have worked its usual magic: in January this year, details of the commission's five-year action plan for animal welfare were published without any mention of geese or foie gras. But the plan did talk up welfare guidelines for aqua culture, noting that "information is progressively accumulating on the sentience of fish." While waiting for that, you can buy from US foodie websites a t-shirt with a picture of a fat goose on it and the words, "Stop tofu abuse—eat foie gras."
Screwcaps vs corks
How often do you reject a bottle of wine? A drinks manager with one of the big French hotel groups once told me he knew that one in 20 of the wines in their cellars was no good. Luckily, he said, customers only ever sent back one in a hundred. His 5 per cent statistic seems about right. Every year the international wine challenge (IWC), run by Wine and Spirit magazine, tastes more than 9,000 entries. This year it found that 4.4 per cent of the bottles were either oxidated or had excessive sulphur content—both problems associated with a "corked" wine. Some large-scale competitive tastings have found as many as 7 per cent of bottles to be spoiled.
The use of novel methods for stoppering bottles is now widespread enough at the expensive end of the market for a significant judgement to be made about their performance. At this year's IWC, 1,160 bottles had a screwcap closure and 5,196 a cork (the rest had glass or synthetic corks—"zorks," as they're known in the trade). In this face-off, there was a clear winner— only 2.2 per cent of the screw-top wines were spoiled. There are still some questions over screw-top closures, but recent research appears to prove that wines do not "breathe" in any useful way through corks. Many blind tastings have shown that even grand old wines are better if they have been kept under screw-top. Sommeliers don't like it, but the age of wines going pop is coming to an end.
