Brigitte Bardot and Foie Gras

by Andrew Barrow, Posted Oct 19th 2005 @ 3:35PM

As reported on the blog side of the French food/drink/travel/culture site French Duck Brigitte Bardot is stepping into the foie gras battleground.

She has launched a campaign to stop consumption of this traditional delicacy (California I believe is also planning on banning its production). France produces over 80-% of the worlds foie gras (should have kept that fact for a Did You Know post!) but as French Duck points out the practice stems from the discovery that wild birds caught before migration gorge themselves and fatten their own livers to garner enough energy and fat reserves for their migratory flight.

I just wonder if they couldn't produce this really scrumptious treat without the force-feeding?

Filed Under: Trends, Ingredients
Tags: mediterranean, poultry

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-19-2005 @4:45PM Dmnkly said... The thing that I don't get is that gavage doesn't seem appreciably different from how you raise baby birds... in our case a cockatoo. We were instructed by both breeder and vet to take a syringe filled with food (some kind of paste, as I recall), insert it into the bird's mouth, and feed it until its gullet is full and visibly distended. My understanding at the time was that this is how their bodies were designed to work... to store excessive amounts of food in their gullets that would be digested over time as room in their stomachs allowed. Does anybody know how, or if, foie gras production differs?
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