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One Man's Liver...

Editorial in today's New York Times:

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
April 4, 2005

The Chef Recommends That You Enjoy the Sauternes All by Itself Tonight

The list of things we do to animals before we eat them is constrained only by the limits of human hunger and ingenuity, which means it is not constrained by much. Trapping, hooking, netting, plucking, bleeding, butterflying, beheading, gutting - the search for delicious knows few bounds or qualms.

That's why it is surprising that a prominent chef, of all people - Charlie Trotter, the TV celebrity and author from Chicago - would decide to draw the line at a practice as old and esteemed as the force-feeding of ducks and geese to give them fatty, luscious livers.

That's right: Chef Trotter has renounced foie gras, on ethical grounds.

He says he stopped serving it about three years ago, after becoming unnerved at the sight of farm ducks being tube-fed into obesity. He kept quiet about it, but the conspicuous absence of foie gras from his menus led to rumors in the restaurant world, and he was outed last Tuesday in The Chicago Tribune.

Don't be frightened, foodies, but this may be a trend - another example of how far the animal-rights cause has come in from the fringe. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year banned the production or sale of foie gras in California. (The law takes effect in 2012, to give the state's tiny foie gras industry - basically, a guy in Sonoma named Guillermo - time to adjust.) A similar bill has been introduced in New York, the country's only other foie gras producer. Other chefs, perhaps fearing the unthinkable, have jumped all over Mr. Trotter, calling his gesture hypocritical grandstanding by a media hound (and author, so you know, of "Charlie Trotter's Meat and Game," with recipes like Foie Gras Five Ways and Sweet-and-Sour Braised Lettuce Soup With Foie Gras and Radishes).

They should knock it off. Fine cooking is fine art, and Mr. Trotter should feel free to use whatever materials he likes. He says foie gras is cruel, but he could have also called it boring - a cliché slurped by too many diners who, we suspect, would swoon just as easily over the velvety succulence of Spam or schmaltz on rye, if they were prohibitively priced and listed on the menu in French. By spurning an easy fix of fancy fat, Mr. Trotter is simply making his job a bit harder, and this man-eat-duck world a slightly kinder place. There is much to admire in that.