Business in Vancouver (June 10-16, 2008)
Today's blue plate special: Foie gras protests
Metro Vancouver restauranteurs at odds over removing the controversial appetizer from their menus
Glenn Korstrom
Ordering a foie gras appetizer at a Vancouver restaurant is getting increasingly difficult.
Several local restaurants have removed the controversial fattened duck or goose liver delicacy from their menus in the past two months. This comes while holdouts, like Le Gavroche owner Manuel Ferreira, defended their foie gras as ethically made -in contrast to the foie gras produced by daily force-feeding ducks or geese one third of their body weight until their livers balloon to roughly 12 times their original size.
Lift Restaurant owner Bob Lindsay said negative consumer feedback prompted him to remove what was an otherwise popular and expensive menu item.
Cafe de Paris owner Jon Michael and Cru Restaurant owner Mark Taylor have also stopped serving foie gras.
Their decision came after Liberation BC protesters started picketing restaurants that sell the dish.
Michael said he was influenced more by slow sales than protests. After he made his decision, however, he hung a large "we do not sell foie gras" banner outside his restaurant.
Taylor also pointed to slow sales and stressed that he wasn't influnced by vocal Liberation BC protesters, who believe foie gras is produced by mistreating animals. "If they had picketed the restaurant, I never would have taken foie gras off the menu," he said. "I just don't run my business that way."
Vancouver's anti-foie-gras activists are stepping up local protests as their counterparts worldwide face losing the momentum of public support.
Celebrities Paul McCartney and Martin Sheen helped convince California governer Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign a 2004 bill to phase out foie gras sales state-wide by 2012. Chicago's aldermen followed suit by voting 48-1 to outlaw foie gras in April 2006. But on May 14, the tide shifted again when Chicago's aldermen voted 37-6 to repeal the city's foie gras ban.
Liberation BC campaign director Joanne Chang told Business in Vancouver that her group aims to get Vancouver city council to ban foie gras sales.
Other Liberation BC campaigns protest inhumane turkey farming practices, fur sales and the seal hunt.
Chang listed West Restaurant, Meinhardt Fine Foods, the Greedy Pig, Urban Fair and Oyama Sausage Company as businesses that have voluntarily stopped selling foie gras since the start of the year.
But that hasn't dampened Vancouverites' demand for the duck foie gras.
Lindsay said diners at his Coal Harbour bistro bought five servings of the cheese-like appetizer on an average night before he removed the item from menus.
"It's very popular," agreed Le Gavroche's Ferreira. "On any given night, about 15% to 20% of our clientele has our seared foie gras. That's 10 portions a night in a small restaurant our size."
Ferreira confronted picketers outside his restaurant earlier this spring to defend buying foie gras from Aux Champs d'Elise, a Quebec farm that Ferreira toured two years ago. The Le Gavroche owner believes the farms ducks are given as much food as they want, but are not force-fed.
France produces most of the world's foie gras. French law requires farmers to forcefeed geese until the birds' livers bloat to qualify for a foie gras designation.
Farmers elsewhere in the world have more leeway. For example, Quebec farmers can produce foie gras by allowing ducks to eat as much as they want freely.
Aux Champs d'Elise's website claims that its feeder "adapts himself to the ducks instead of the other way around."
But Chang calls that ridiculous. Her website (www.liberationbc.com) contains photos that she said were taken by undercover investigators at Aux Champs d'Elise.
