Foie gras to be cut from New York menus after council ban
Restaurants and grocery stores in New York City will be banned from selling foie gras from 2022.
The bill, which is expected to be signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, would forbid the sale of the fattened liver of a duck or goose.
Animal welfare activists had campaigned for a ban on the grounds that the methods used to produce foie gras are cruel, involving force-feeding a bird a corn-based mixture through a tube slipped down its throat.
Farmers who produce foie gras – meaning fatty liver in French – say the birds are treated humanely and do not suffer during the fattening process.
The council vote was 42-6 for the final version of the bill that calls for a fine of up to 2,000 US dollars (£1,500) for each violation.
With about 1,000 New York restaurants offering foie gras, top chefs did not take kindly to the news.
“This is idiocracy,” tweeted chef David Chang of the famed Momofuku global restaurant chain, adding: “Stupid short sighted and a misunderstanding of the situation.”
“I think a ban on foie gras is ridiculous,” said James Beard Award-winner Ken Oringer, co-owner and chef at Manhattan’s Toro tapas restaurant that serves dishes like foie gras torchons with buttermilk biscuits and foie gras katsu sandwiches.
“Food choice is everything and the beauty of our country is that we can make the choice to eat what we want to eat.”
He said he supports producers of foie gras in the Catskill Mountains about two hours north of the city.
“I have been to their farms and they operate with the utmost integrity to their farm animals,” the chef said.
The 200-acre Hudson Valley Foie Gras and the smaller La Belle Farm collectively raise about 350,000 birds for foie gras a year in a process that fattens the bird’s liver up to 10 times its normal size.
The resulting fatty livers, connoisseurs say, are as silken and rich as butter, and bring in 15 million dollars (£11.5 million) a year — about a third going to New York City.
The two farms had already lost the California market that represented another third of their sales.
New York City would not be the first place in the US to ban the food. California took a similar measure in 2012 while Chicago banned foie gras in 2006, but the ordinance was repealed two years later.
Losing the New York market would be devastating, says Marcus Henley, the manager of Hudson Valley Foie Gras.
“We will not let this restriction on New Yorkers’ freedom of choice go unchallenged in the courts, and we intend to file a lawsuit,” he said.