Chicago says no to foie

CHICAGO’S ban on the sale of foie gras has left chefs in the one-time big-shouldered hog butcher to the world shaking their heads and wondering what the next forbidden menu item will be.

Last Wednesday, the Chicago City Council drew headlines by outlawing the sale of the luxury ingredient. The ordinance, which was proposed by Alderman Joe Moore, passed on a voice vote. It takes effect in mid-June. A similar measure was approved by the California Legislature in 2004, but doesn’t take effect until 2012. That law will also prohibit production of foie gras.

Animal rights groups have long criticized the making of foie gras -- fattened duck or goose liver -- as cruel because to produce the delicacy, the fowl must be force-fed for two weeks before slaughter.

“My biggest fear is what’s next, “ says Grant Achatz, chef at the cutting-edge restaurant Alinea. “Veal? Then rabbit? Squab? Let’s face it, you can take apart just about any commercially grown animal and find some flaw in the raising process. It just depends on how far people want to push it.”

Paul Kahan, chef at Blackbird and Avec, agrees. “The implications are so far-reaching,” he says. “Do we want politicians deciding what we can and cannot eat? I feel it’s incredibly hypocritical because there are so many things people eat every day that are raised in an inhumane way. The way chickens are raised, if people saw it ... commodity pork, I could just go on.”

In fact, Farm Sanctuary, one of the organizations behind the foie gras ban, also has ongoing campaigns against practices in the veal and poultry industries, as well as another in favor of recognizing animals as “sentient beings” that are not “mere commodities to be exploited for food and fiber.”

“Farm Sanctuary is trying to educate people to the cruelty of factory farming,” says Meghan Beeby, the organization’s campaign manager. “People just aren’t aware of the psychological torture animals undergo in modern agriculture. What we are mostly concerned with is the cruelty involved in factory farming, and foie gras is one of the cruelest of the industries.”

Similar bans are proposed in Hawaii, Illinois and Massachusetts.

High-profile chefs have long been targeted by animal rights activists. Michael Cimarusti, chef-owner of Los Angeles restaurant Providence, remembers protesters lined up outside Manhattan landmark Le Cirque when he worked there more than a decade ago. “This debate has been going on for a long, long time,” he says.

“Look, it’s not a perfect product in that the duck doesn’t lead an idyllic life, but the feeding techniques are more humane than [the protesters] say. Maybe I’m not sensitive enough, but this is a domesticated animal that has been raised like this for centuries, and it doesn’t bother me to serve it.”

Some chefs say that every month brings letters from people seeking to educate them about foie gras. “It’s kind of insulting, actually,” says Josiah Citrin of Melisse in Santa Monica. “They say ‘If you knew anything about foie gras, you wouldn’t serve it.’ But I’ve looked into it, and I do know how the ducks are raised and how it’s made. I’m making an informed choice on it, and I’m comfortable with that.”

The French Laundry’s Thomas Keller says the foie gras issue is part of the larger moral quandary every cook faces. “Serving foie gras doesn’t bother me any more than it bothers me to serve chicken or lobster,” he says. “Anything that we eat, we kill.”

Neither Achatz nor Kahan says the loss of foie gras will have much effect on their restaurants.

“I can’t serve foie gras anymore? OK,” says Achatz, who now has it on the menu cooked and pushed through a sieve so it resembles shredded wheat and then served with what he calls “blueberry soda.” “It’s not like we’re a classical French restaurant and that’s why people come here. For us, it’s just another ingredient in our mix, it’s not part of our identity.”

Kahan, who serves a more traditional terrine of foie gras with a salad of rhubarb and pickled ramps, agrees. “It’s not something we have to have,” he says. “But I will take a stand and say [the ban] is absurd.”

Kahan and Achatz trace the ban to a very public, very heated feud last year between two of Chicago’s top chefs: Charlie Trotter, who announced that he had stopped serving foie gras, and Rick Tramonto, chef at TRU, one of Trotter’s main luxe dining competitors. Indeed, Trotter’s position is included among the official whereases cited in support of the bill.

Today, Tramonto laughs off the exchange. “Charlie and I got a chuckle out of it. Hey, both of us made Newsweek.”

But he finds nothing funny in the current situation. “Unfortunately, the public is the loser,” he says. “If [animal rights groups are] going to dictate what we’re going to eat, what’s next? That’s the problem that I have. I wish I could say that the people have spoken, but I don’t really think the people had anything to do with this.”

Trotter did not return repeated calls for comment, but in previous statements he has made it clear that he regarded his decision not to serve foie gras as a personal one, not as any kind of animal rights call to arms.

According to an earlier article in the Chicago Tribune, Trotter refused to sign an anti-foie gras pledge promoted by Farm Sanctuary, saying “These people are idiots. Understand my position: I have nothing to do with a group like that. I think they’re pathetic.... “

The practical effect of the ban, which carries a fine of $250 to $500 per offense, is still being sorted out. Some chefs have questioned that if the law specifies “foie gras,” whether it would be legal to serve a product that was merely labeled “duck liver.”

Furthermore, the ban affects only the city of Chicago, not the many outlying towns and cities that surround it. Tramonto, for example, would not be able to serve foie gras at his flagship TRU. But at Osteria di Tramonto and Tramonto Steak & Seafood, which he is opening this spring in nearby Wheeling, he could.

“What are they going to do? Are we going to see them leading chefs away in handcuffs?” he asks. “My integrity is my integrity and I won’t break any laws, but the thing’s absurd.”