At a table with her husband and a couple of friends at 15East@Tocqueville, a chic and upscale restaurant in Manhattan, Karen Frommer shrugs her shoulders when AFP asks her about the ban – for the moment theoretical – of the sale, consumption and possession of foie gras in the New York megalopolis.
“We will never be able to get along with vegans! If they feel so concerned about the force-feeding of ducks, that they watch videos of lamb slaughterhouses or chicken farming”, indignantly this retiree from 78 years old, who discovered foie gras in the south-west of France half a century ago, and often offers it in a terrine, whole or pan-fried.
The restaurant manager Marco Moreira, an elegant Brazilian of Italian origin who has said for more than 20 years “amazed by the taste and texture of foie gras”, is for the moment not illegal, pending local justice decides.
Because the case of New York foie gras, a product made exclusively in this state of 20 million inhabitants – France no longer exports it to the United States – is now being played out in court.
Following the example of California and after lobbying by animal welfare groups, the progressive mayor of New York at the time, Bill de Blasio, ratified in November 2019 a municipal law which prohibited the sale, service and even hold foie gras.
This text, which prohibits a “luxury” dish from the “forced” and “cruel” force-feeding of ducks, was supposed to be applied three months after its adoption, i.e. in November 2022.
New York, the state against the city
But last September, the state’s two main duck-farming and foie gras-making operations — Hudson Valley Foie Gras Farm and La Belle Farm — got the local Supreme Court to suspend the bylaw prohibition.
Restaurateurs and breeders even won the support of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Food Markets at the end of 2022, which is attacking the legality of the order issued by the city.
The municipality counterattacked in court in January. Led since 2022 by Democrat Eric Adams, who claims his veganism, she did not respond to AFP.
Breeder and producer Marcus Henley is equally certain of his good standing.
With his airs of an old rocker and his slow and soft speech, the vice-president of Hudson Valley Foie Gras Farm gives AFP a tour of his huge duck and chicken farm in Ferndale, a freezing and remote corner, two hours north. northwest New York.
With his 320 employees — Latin American farm workers who force-feed, slaughter, bleed, pluck and chain-empty ducks to recover the livers — Mr. Henley says he generates $25 million in annual revenue. .
He would lose a quarter if this measure applied, which his detractors denounce as a new “prohibition”.
“Anthropomorphism”
“There is always a little concern (…) But we cannot pass a local law which has a negative impact on farms in an agricultural district approved by the State”, wants to believe this fellow of 66 years by showing his tens of thousands of ducks in battery and in enclosures, reared from the age of three to 105 days.
Under huge outdated sheds and in the acrid smell characteristic of poultry farming, the ducks are force-fed from the age of three months using compressor machines armed with plastic pipes and tubes which send grain mixed with water into the gizzard.
Faced with this practice, which is increasingly shocking in Europe and America, Marcus Henley affirms it: “As a farmer, no, the animals do not suffer”, the gizzard naturally having, according to him, a storage function.
“It’s easy to do anthropomorphism”, defends this trained scientist, for whom “animals and people are different”.
Enough to make Bryan Pease, lawyer for the association “Voters for Animal Rights” who worked on New York law, jump.
“The vast majority of people believe that all animals deserve to be treated humanely, even those raised for food. That’s why there are more and more laws targeting cruel animal husbandry practices” , says the lawyer to AFP, convinced that foie gras will really be banned in New York “in a few months”.
