October 13, 2004
By Dave Richardson
Times Herald-Record


Ferndale – News flash: the Hudson Valley's foie gras industry is in crisis.
Foie what, you ask? Foie gras, pronounced "fwah grah." It's a delicacy made from duck or goose livers. We're not talking cheap cow livers here, pal. A top-of-the-line pound-and-a-half chunk of grade-A duck liver can run you $65 or more. You won't find it on the menu at Denny's or at the diner in the local truck stop. These days it's considered trendy to slice it, sear it and serve it up with a tangy fruit garnish. But it's usually just made into pate, so you could think of it as fancy liverwurst for rich people.

Though it may seem hard to believe, duck livers are big business indeed. Worldwide, foie gras is a billion dollar industry. Ferndale's own Hudson Valley Foie Gras, one of only two foie gras makers in the entire country, rakes in millions of dollars a year selling its tasty liver goop to gourmet distributors and restaurants across the United States.
That, thanks in part to California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – and maybe our own state Legislature – is about to change.

A new California law effectively outlawing foie gras production there and a nearly identical one currently in committee in New York's Legislature could spell doom for the duck liver industry in the United States.

EVERY WEEK, MORE THAN 3,000 Moulard ducks selflessly give up their lives – and their livers – to please the palates of gourmets across America who crave the rich, creamy taste of Hudson Valley Foie Gras.

Born in 1981, the company and its only domestic competitor, California's Sonoma Foie Gras, account for about half the foie gras found in the United States. In the company's plant in rural Ferndale, a sparsely populated swath of Catskills greenery between Monticello and Liberty, owners Izzy Yanay and Michael Ginor and their 200 employees churn out a quarter-million pounds of foie gras a year. Yanay and Ginor do 90 percent of their business with distributors who move the product along to high-end restaurants and gourmet shops nationwide. Their efforts to educate average consumers aside, foie gras is still a relatively unknown treat, enjoyed by the monied and the elite but ignored – and mispronounced – by the rest of us unwashed types. "Sometimes at Christmas you get someone who wants to make something special," Yanay said. "Now, in France, everyone and their mother has it in the house. Unfortunately, we're still not in the common kitchen."

FOIE GRAS IS WELL KNOWN in some other circles, too – notably among radical animal rights activists. The industry has been under assault for decades.
The reason: the way foie gras is made. In order to make top-quality foie gras, you have to force-feed the bird a rich, fatty goop for weeks on end, making its liver swell up like a big, fatty balloon almost 10 times normal size. To do this, you need to insert a plastic tube down the bird's throat two or three times a day, using compressed air to force about a pound of food down its gullet in just a few seconds. When the liver is big enough to make a profitable product, well, it's lights out for Mr. Duckie. Activists say the process is cruel, but Ginor disagrees. He admits the 100,000 or so ducks at his Ferndale plant are doomed to an untimely assembly-line death. It looks like it should hurt like hell, but Ginor insists study after study has shown the ducks don't suffer from it. "The image is that it's cruel, but it's not and we invite anyone to come and see for themselves," Ginor said.
Not so, says Cem Aiken, a research associate for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "I don't know of any scientific studies that show the ducks don't suffer, and there were studies in the European Union that show they do, and that it's painful," Akin said. "It's an insult to those poor animals."

UNFORTUNATELY FOR THE INDUSTRY, Schwarzenegger agrees with Akin. On Sept. 29 he signed a law banning the force-feeding of ducks to make foie gras in California. The California law also bans the sale of duck livers made by force feeding in the state.
The law doesn't take effect until 2012, theoretically giving the industry more than seven years to invent a different method.

"If agricultural producers are successful in this endeavor, the ban on foie gras sales and production in California will not occur," Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement.
That, Ginor says, is a pipe dream.

"Millions of dollars and French francs and euros have been spent researching other ways to produce foie gras," Ginor said. "There is no other way and there never has been."
New York is considering a similar bill that could mean death for Hudson Valley Foie Gras and surrender America's foie gras industry to competitors in Canada and France.
Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, whose district includes the company's Ferndale plant, says she loves animals and respects PETA's point of view, but she's dead set against a bill she says will cost jobs and cede yet another industry to foreign competition.

"I do support the industry," she said. "It's a source of income for many people. In this time when we're scrambling for more industry and screaming about outsourcing it just doesn't make any sense."

For Ginor and Yanay, the California law and the New York bill hang like twin guillotines. It's a shame, they say, that foie gras, has such a snobby image and gets such a bum rap from Joe Six Pack and friends. "We're very small, we're unique, we're expensive and not everyone knows about us," Yanay said. "...We're alone and nobody really cares about us."

Foie gras: Charcoal grilled with fig jam

Serves 6
Ingredients:
1 pound fresh or dried figs, diced
½ cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup port wine
1½ pounds grade-A fresh foie gras, cut into 1-inch cubes
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 pitas cut into wedges
2 tablespoons duck fat or olive oil
Fresh chives for garnish
To cook:
In a small saucepan, combine figs with vinegar and port and set over medium-low heat until the liquid has almost completely evaporated and the figs have broken down.
Season foie gras cubes with salt and pepper and arrange on skewers. Grill to rare over hot charcoal, avoiding flare-ups from the drippings when possible (about 30-45 seconds). As an alternate method, foie gras cubes can be sautéed in a hot, dry cast-iron pan.
Brush each pita wedge with duck fat or olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill the prepared pita over charcoal, just until warmed through. To serve, top each pita wedge with a dollop of fig jam and a cube of foie gras. Drizzle a few drops of syrup from the jam on top and garnish with a fresh chive.
Cost: Only $75!

Hudson Valley Foie Gras