Ordering ethical foie gras requires formulating a personal moral stance on the treatment of geese and ducks.
Ordering ethical foie gras requires making a personal decision about which methods of raising geese and ducks you consider to be ethical. After you have done some research and reading about gavage, the process by which the animals are typically force fed with grain to produce foie gras, you will be able to formulate a stance on the ethics of this procedure and on the various alternate ways of producing foie gras. Once you know your position, it will be relatively easy to figure out if and how you can order some foie gras without compromising your moral standards.
Instructions
1. Read about gavage, which is the typical process for making foie gras. Gavage involves force-feeding the geese or ducks through foods tubes. Consider the process both from the perspective of those who oppose the procedure and from that of those who do not oppose it.
2. Think about which of these two ethical stances fits best with your moral perspective. Is gavage cruel, painful, and inhumane, or are the activists who oppose foie gras imposing too many human attributes onto the ducks and geese and forgetting that geese's gullets naturally expand to let them feed before migrating. Consider how gavage compares to the treatment of other animals raised for food.
3. You won't have an issue ordering foie gras if you decide that gavage is not unethical. Do a simple Internet search for ordering foie gras, and you will find numerous products to choose from. Or simply check the gourmet section in your local grocery or specialty foods store.
4. If gavage violates your ethical standards, then you may be interested in a product know as ethical foie gras, designed in Spain by Eduardo Sousa. Sousa's company, La Pateria de Sousa, produces an award-winning foie gras by giving the geese freedom to roam and not treating them as domesticated, such that they naturally gorge and fatten their own livers. Sousa's foie gras is not currently available in the U.S., but check his company's website for any changes. Also watch for ethical foie gras to be produced in the future using a similar methods at Stone Barns in Westchester County, NY.
5. If you find gavage to be unethical and cannot find any ethical foie gras to purchase, consider whether gavage would be ethical of a soft feeding tube were used rather than a hard one, so that the process was less uncomfortable for the animals. Contact foie gras producers directly to ask if they are using this technique. Start with California-based producers, as they are currently adopting this method.
6. If you don't consider soft feeding tubes to be ethical, but still want some foie gras, try making a deal with a hunter for some wild foie gras. Hunters periodically come across wild geese that have gorged themselves enough to naturally to have livers that resemble and taste like foie gras. You will probably need to arrange to purchase the liver through a personal relationship with a hunter, and not by mail order.
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