- The French agriculture ministry has infuriated animal
welfare organisations by defending that bastion of Gallic culinary culture,
foie gras, rather than bow to the demands of Brussels.
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- The ministry yesterday gave the country's 6,000 producers
an extra five years - until 2010 - to scrap the cramped individual cages,
known as epinettes, to which geese and ducks are confined at the end of
the fattening process, arguing that a European ruling on the subject was
just a recommendation, not a directive.
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- "It's shameful," said a spokeswoman for the
French Animal Rights League.
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- "France has ratified all these conventions on cruelty
to animals, and even put most of them into national law, yet it continues
to condone this barbaric practice. It seems foie gras is sacred."
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- The battle over France's most emblematic delicacy has
been raging since 1998, when the Council of Europe, under pressure from
countries like the UK, Germany, Sweden and Denmark, where ethics tend to
outweigh considerations of mere gastronomy, issued a directive stating
that no animal should be "provided with food or liquid in a manner
... which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury".
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- The council and many other European bodies, up to and
including the commission, have since made many more rulings and recommendations,
all of which - if they were ever observed - would end the force-feeding
of ducks and geese for foie gras.
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- One states that animals should be fed "a wholesome
diet appropriate to their species, in sufficient quantity to maintain them
in good health." Another says that ducks and geese, if kept in cages,
should be able to "stand normally, turn without difficulty, flap their
wings, preen, perform social interactions and feed and drink normally".
They can do none of these at present.
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- But foie gras is big business in France, which accounts
for 70% of the 20,000-odd tonnes produced in the world each year and for
85% of global consumption. The industry, centred in the south-west, employs
30,000 people directly and indirectly, and the average French person eats
foie gras at least 10 times a year.
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- To make the nation's favourite entrÈe, farmers
push a 25cm (10in) tube down the neck of each bird and pour in 450g (1lb)
of corn two or three times a day for up to a month. By the time they are
slaughtered, they are suffering from acute liver disease (the organ swells
from five to 10 times its normal size), diarrhoea, panting, walking difficulties,
lesions and inflammations
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- The foie gras lobby has, of course, fought back fiercely.
Recently a committee of eminent scientists from the National Veterinary
School and the State Agricultural Research Institute produced an 80-page
report claiming the birds cannot be being cruelly treated because they
are neither ill, over-stressed or even over-fed.
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- One team found that once force-feeding is stopped, the
birds' livers return to normal within a month and their organs shows no
lasting damage. A second denied the birds' diet was excessive, citing cases
of farmyard geese capable of voluntarily eating up to 600g of corn at a
single sitting, while a third measured their stress levels and found they
were far more frightened by any passing stranger than by the farmer who
came to feed them.
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- But pressure is mounting inexorably on France if not
to halt the production of foie gras outright - which even the most committed
animal rights activist recognises is not very likely soon - then at least
to improve the conditions in which the birds are housed and fed.
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- "We will implement the recommendation on individual
cages, but we need more time and we're glad the government has recognised
that," said Marie-Pierre PÈ of the industry association Cifog.
"Bigger cages will make it harder to grab the birds.
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- "Feeding them will take 20-30% longer. That will
cost us money." The agriculture ministry declined all comment on its
decision.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1307304,00.html
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