This week: the cruelty of foie gras
Foie gras is something close to many Hong Kong people's hearts, or should I say stomachs. The delicacy comes from the livers of geese or ducks that have been fattened by force-feeding. Most of my friends in Hong Kong are surprised to find that it is necessary to force-feed a bird to the brink of liver failure to produce the rich and buttery delicacy.
I have noticed that here in the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong, we are buffered from controversies such as the production of foie gras. Is it simply because in the money-making survival frenzy we don't have the time to notice. Or is it because we don't care as it happens so far away, or is it that the animal welfare groups here are not vocal enough in the media to take their point across? I don't know, but I think it's a combination of all three. Today I will expose the mysteries behind foie gras and its production.
The fattening of birds by overfeeding has been with us since the dawn of civilisation. It started all the way back in Egypt. In a tomb at Saqqara there is a bas relief of ancient Egyptians overfeeding geese, presumably to fatten them up. It was taken up by the Romans and after the fall of the Roman Empire, the secret of foie gras was maintained by Jewish people.
The law of food for the Jewish people, the Kashrut, forbade the use of lard and butter, so it was natural to use olive oil, sesame oil or poultry fat as a substitute. It is still a contended issue in the Jewish community today, as the Kashrut also states that all meat should be drained of blood before consumption and the liver is mostly made up of blood vessels. In time, the nobility of Europe discovered the taste of foie gras and it has been on the menu ever since.
Birds have the ability to prepare themselves for long migratory trips by eating more than usual. They have a dilatation in the oesophagus that stores the food to help slow the digestive process. Much of this extra energy is stored as fat in the liver. Force-feeding can produce a liver six times the normal size.
In the early stages of production the bird is allowed a relatively normal life. The stomach is toughened up by the consumption of grass. Once the bird reaches full size, the fattening process starts in earnest. The birds are fed more and more grain and during the final couple of weeks before slaughter they are fed through a tube pushed into the oesophagus with a pneumatic pump that fills the bird up in two to three seconds. The producer must avoid damage to the oesophagus as it will cause bleeding and death.
