Lab-grown foie gras cannot be labelled as such, rules official French association
- The foie gras association said most French do not want to consume artificial products resulting from cellular manipulations
- Livers for foie gras are obtained by force-feeding ducks with a tube stuck down their throats, a practice denounced by critics as unnecessarily cruel
The quintessential French pate delicacy of foie gras cannot be called as such if it is grown in a laboratory, an association said on Monday, after a start-up launched a high-profile bid to grow the food from duck cells.
Gourmey, a Paris-based venture, has raised US$10 million (€8.5 million) from European and US investors this month to perfect its recipe for making fattened duck liver in a lab.
Its bid has come amid growing international concern over the methods used to make the delicacy. California has outlawed foie gras sales for years and New York plans to do so next year.
But the Comite Interprofessionel des Palmipedes a Foie Gras (IFOG) association, which groups together players in France’s foie gras industry, countered that the venture would have no right to call their product foie gras.
“The label ‘foie gras’ is strictly overseen by precise regulations, both at the French and European level”, it said.
This name is “authorised only to define a liver resulting from a duck, or a goose, fattened by force-feeding,” it emphasised.