foie gras food fights in Portland

Sunday, January 16, 2005

The affair of the duck began quietly, with letters and videotapes slipped through the mail slots of Portland's top restaurants.

Then came the phone calls. And finally, the demonstrations -- though the organizers preferred the term "educational outreach. " There were signs ("How much cruelty can you swallow?"),glossy pamphlets, duck costumes and perhaps, depending on whom you believe, stronger tactics -- false reservations that one chef claims cost him thousands of dollars.

At issue: foie gras, the fattened liver of force-fed ducks (and geese, though now rarely), a food some gastronomes prize for its rich, silky taste and animal rights activists revile.

"We would like to see Portland foie gras-free," says Matt Rossell, who works for In Defense of Animals and leads the local campaign against it.

Controversy has dogged the dish for centuries. In Roman times, critics held up foie gras (pronounced fwah-GRAH') as a symbol of the empire's depraved decadence. Many European countries -- and recently, Israel -- have passed laws specifically banning its production.

For some time now, wars over foie gras have raged in California, home to one of the three U.S. foie gras farms. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed a bill that would ban its production and sale by 2012, but not before activists in Northern California vandalized a restaurant and the homes of two chefs.

Here, the conflict has had a distinctly Portland flavor, mixing street protests and intense debate about the ethics of animal slaughter.

This city, after all, is known nationally for elevating food consciousness to a high art.

Top restaurants use local, organic, seasonal and sustainable ingredients, star chefs lead protests against farmed salmon, and even the local fast-food chains serve organic beef.

When local activists decided that the food consciousness here still wasn't high enough, the chefs so famous for educating others took umbrage. One chef flew to California to see for himself how the ducks at a foie gras farm were treated -- and pronounced it "all very zen-like."

In the end, the fight was less about foie gras and more about what the politics of food means in a town such as Portland, straddling progressive values and the West Coast ethic of individual freedom.

The activists

In a small, comfortable office just off Northeast Killingsworth Street where the fridge is decorated with stickers proclaiming it a vegan zone and two dogs loll happily on the floor, Rossell and Connie Durkee, the local staff of In Defense of Animals, sit with great intensity. They are watching a video.

Images of sick and injured ducks flash across the screen. At times, Rossell and Durkee shift uncomfortably in their seats. This is the same video, purportedly filmed by undercover activists at the two major U.S. foie gras farms (Sonoma Foie Gras in California and Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York), that Durkee and Rossell sent to local restaurants along with letters urging them to take the item off their menus.

What makes foie gras foie gras, and makes some people, such as Rossell -- who keeps two ducks at home -- and Durkee so upset is a process known as gavage.

When the ducks are about 3 months old (only ducks are used in the United States), they are moved to a barn, and for the last two to four weeks of their lives, a tube is inserted down their esophagus twice a day. A machine pumps corn mash or cooked whole corn into their crop. Since ducks store excess fat in their liver, the liver swells over the course of this force-feeding regimen -- to about 10 times its normal size.

Those who defend foie gras argue that gavage simply takes advantage of ducks' natural tendency to gorge themselves on grain before long migrations, to create energy reserves for their long flights.

"If the birds would naturally gorge themselves," Rossell counters, "why force feed them?"

To Rossell and Durkee, it seemed inconceivable to serve foie gras in Portland, "a progressive town, an animal-loving town," Rossell says.

So they posted their tapes and letters to local restaurants that served foie gras -- a list of Portland's most expensive spots. And when chefs didn't remove it from their menus, they sent out the word to supporters that it was time for an educational campaign.

What they didn't count on was that some Portland chefs, their kitchens full of local, chemical-free field greens, heirloom beets and free-range organic chickens, knew exactly how foie gras was made -- and didn't mind one bit.

A personal response

In most restaurants, the tapes landed like bombs.

Reaction was perhaps most temperate at Higgins, a warm, inviting, white-tablecloth space where meats hang curing in the rafters, run by chef Greg Higgins, considered the doyen of Portland's food-consciousness movement. And even he compares the tape to the tactics some anti-abortion groups use. "Very sensational," he says. "Extremely reactionary."

Not that he wasn't open to what he considered a more reasoned discussion about foie gras, he says. He had done his own research and wondered whether -the dish aligned with the food philosophy printed on his menu: "We believe strongly in supporting farming techniques that are sustainable, organic and regenerative."

Feeding a duck large quantities of corn, twice a day, for several weeks? "You can't say that's sustainable," he says. And though ducks and geese may "have a natural inclination to gorge themselves before migration, would they eat to the point their liver swells to 10 times the natural size? That's at best being careless to the truth."

In the end, Higgins decided to pull foie gras from his menu, he says, not because the foie gras activists convinced him, but because they amplified a debate he'd already been having in his head. Plus it wasn't an important part of his business. When members of In Defense of Animals offered him a plaque to hang in his restaurant, to certify that Higgins was foie-gras free, he declined.

Reservations canceled

Things were not so calm two miles away at Hurley's, a high-end restaurant in Northwest Portland owned by former firefighter turned French Culinary School graduate Thomas Hurley.

Hurley, whose restaurant features flames dancing up the kitchen door, is something of a foie gras aficionado -- "there is nothing like the texture, the aroma, the taste," he says -- and he served it liberally with scallops, steak and tuna and used the drippings to saute vegetables. He had no qualms about foie gras. "None."

When the letters and calls asking him to pull it began, he didn't pay much attention. Then one night, a group of people showed up outside his restaurant with signs, pamphlets and a portable television showing sick and dying ducks, which they pushed up against the restaurant window. Hurley, who is a big man with a piquant vocabulary, got angry.

He called the police. The demonstrators politely moved the television back. He says a rash of people failed to show up for their reservations, and when he called, those he reached said they weren't coming because he served foie gras. Durkee and Rossell say they never encouraged false reservations nor knew of anyone using the tactic. "We have 1,000 people on our e-mail list," Rossell says. "We can't control what anyone decides to do on their own."

Hurley dug in. So did the anti-foie gras camp. They continued to show up outside his restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes as many as 20 strong. He took photographs, wrote down license plate numbers and hung a sign that said members of In Defense of Animals or PETA weren't welcome inside.

A month passed. The reservation cancellations continued and still do, Hurley says, costing him more than $15,000 in business. Finally, Hurley said he was taking foie gras off the menu, "but I told them, 'Don't think I'm doing this for you. I'm doing it for my business.' "

Action and reaction

Over at Carafe, a cozy downtown French bistro with a pressed-tin ceiling, cane chairs and a black and white tiled floor, chef Pascal Sauton promptly added foie gras to his menu, although he had never sold it before, thinking there wasn't much of a market for it in Portland.

"I did it to protest the protesters," he says on a recent afternoon before preparing his next terrine of the dish. "I understand that everyone has their views and causes, but I felt the way they were protesting was not nice."

Last month, foie gras was Carafe's second-best-selling appetizer, after the green salad. "I wish I had put it on my menu earlier," says Sauton, who estimates he is serving 12 to 18 orders a night and has sent out an e-mail titled "The Foie Gras Battle," urging other chefs to put the food on their menu in a show of solidarity.

"I really feel the public should be able to eat what they want and make their own decisions," Sauton says. "If foie gras now, what next? "

Back at the local offices of In Defense of Animals, the campaign continues. For the past several weeks, volunteers have been outside City Market in Northwest Portland, which carries foie gras at its meat counter (and which co-owner John Gorham says they have no plans to pull). They are undaunted by the claims of a rush on foie gras.

"Whenever you push for change in any social context, the pendulum does tend to swing in the opposite direction," Rossell says. "But I think the overarching gain is everyone's consciousness is raised."

Meanwhile, four Portland restaurants have removed foie gras from their menus, but there are winks and nudges that hint of a speakeasy atmosphere where foie gras may be available .

As Hurley puts it, "I have taken it off the menu, but if people want to order it, I'll serve it."

This week, he will be a featured chef at the James Beard House in New York. Among the items on his menu: Foie Gras Candied Apples with Local Brandy and Winter Spices, Foie Gras and Smoked Chicken Torchon with Pear Puree, Toasted Brioche and Pistachio Oil Sorbet, and Duck Consomme with Foie Gras and Perigord Truffles en Croute.