The animal front: Germany bans foie gras (at last!)

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A high-level diplomatic spat has broken out between France and Germany, but this time it is not about saving the euro or European integration. Instead, it is foie gras that is causing the fallout.  Angry missives have flown between Paris and Berlin after the decision by organisers of a leading German food fair to ban the French delicacy, which is made from the liver of fattened geese or ducks.

Foie gras producers are incensed after being told their liver pâté will be not welcome at the biennial Anuga food fair in Cologne in October.  

Whatever the arguments, including the economics of the issue, the whole thing boils down to a choice between one more hedonistic choice and animal cruelty. Period. 

Fair organisers bowed to pressure from animal rights campaigners who claim foie gras production is cruel.

The production of the pâté involves the force-feeding of ducks or geese, known in French as gavage, to create fatty livers. The birds, usually made to swallow food through a tube, end up with livers swelling up to 10 times normal size. The practice is banned in Germany, though the consumption of foie gras is not.

“To our great astonishment the organisers of the fair just let us know that from now on we cannot present or offer tastings of foie gras during the Anuga fair,” Alain Labarthe, president of the organisation Vive le foie gras!, told French journalists.

The French agriculture minister, Bruno le Maire, wrote to his German counterpart, Ilse Aigner, asking her to overturn the ban and threatening to boycott the opening ceremony.

“It is important for the French foie gras sector to be present at a fair visited by numerous buyers in the period before the end of the year celebrations,” Le Maire wrote. “If this exclusion is confirmed, I cannot see how I will be able to take part in the opening.”

Le Maire insisted that France “rigorously applied all [European] community regulations regarding the well-being of animals“.  Aigner replied that it was up to the organisers to decide on the issue.

The affair has provoked a flurry of letters from those for and against foie gras. Animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot wrote to the German minister calling on her not to give in to pressure to overturn the Anuga ban. “France does not apply the community regulations regarding animal welfare,” she said.

Animal rights campaigners claim that only 15% of French foie gras producers have implemented the EU rule that ban keeping birds in individual cages where they are unable to move their wings, a rule that came into effect at the start of 2011.

Alain Fauconnier, a Socialist member of France’s senate, also wrote to the German ambassador in Paris asking him to intervene. “It’s unbelievable. It’s like banning German sausages in France. The economic cost is enormous for us because Germany is an important market,” he wrote.

About 37 million ducks and 700,000 geese are slaughtered each year to make French foie gras. The force-feeding practice is said to date to 2,500BC, though it is unlikely the ancient Egyptians took to fattening their fowl on the industrial scale found in France, where foie gras and its controversial production method is enshrined in law as part of the country’s so-called cultural exception. Article L654 of the 2006 rural code states: “Foie gras is part of the protected cultural and gastronomic heritage of France. By ‘foie gras’ is meant the liver of a duck or a goose specifically fattened by force-feeding.”

France produces about 75% of the world’s foie gras; other sources include the US and China.