The Naturecultures of Foie Gras: Techniques of the Body and a Contested Ethics of Care

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Trent University

The Natureculturesof Foie Gras

Anne Meneley

TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY AND A CONTESTED ETHICSOF CARE

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Lewis and Clark College

Deborah Heath

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ABSTRACT

: :Based on our fieldwork with foie gras producers in the United States and France, this

paper examines the relations among social, technical and nonhuman animal worlds in

foie gras production. Expanding Mauss’s classic conception of “techniques of the body”

to include techniques that link animal and human bodies, we consider insights from

science studies scholars like Haraway, Latour and Goodman. Posing the question of

whether foie gras is natural or pathological, we juxtapose those who view foie gras

production as the apotheosis of murderous meat production, and those who consider it

to be a co-production between humans and animals, one that needs to be guided by an

“ethics of care.” Inspired in part by Temple Grandin’s concept of humane slaughter, this

ethics of care necessarily considers the wellbeing of animal and human co-producers,

along with food safety and quality, as equally important foci for examining animal food

production.

Keywords: foie gras, animal ethics, human–animal relations, meat

La production de foie gras représente une spéculation très particulièrebasée sur la patience et la dextérité du gaveur, dont le savoir-faire estprimordial et incontournable.[The production of foie gras represents a very particular enterprisegrounded in the patience and dexterity of the feeder, whose know-how is fundamental and indispensable.]

(Guy and Buckland 2002)

Peyrenègre Ferme Auberge, Dordogne, France: :

March 31, 2009. Seated at a long shiny steel table covered with rows of freshfoie gras from 25 of their geese, butchered earlier that morning, DanieDubois and her son Gilles work steadily removing the stringy veins from eachliver, and separating the best ones from those with minor imperfections thatwould be cut up and processed, canned and labeled, to be sold in the Dubois’small onsite boutique or on their website (http://www.foiegras-dubois.com).Danie sets a particularly well-formed foie gras to one side, next to a vacuum-packed magret, goose breast, cured and stuffed with foie gras, which isbeginning to thaw. “For dinner!” she says, waving her hand across both theseculinary offerings, and then with a wry grin, nicks a piece of the foie with thetip of her knife, and offers me a taste. Fresh from the source, buttery smooth,a gourmet treat that some would ban as the product of animal torture.

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Deborah arrived the night before at the Dubois family’s foie gras farm,Peyrenègre, nestled in the hills of Southwest France, along with Guillermoand Junny Gonzalez, the couple from El Salvador who own California’s solefoie gras farm, Sonoma Foie Gras. Guillermo Gonzalez had been approachedby an Israeli company about launching a foie gras farm in El Salvador in theearly 1980s, and while it didn’t come to pass, he followed his new-foundpassion to France, tracking down the Dubois family from a newspaper articleabout their farm. In the mid-1980s, the Gonzalezes spent a year here inPérigord, apprenticing with Danie Dubois and her husband Guy, in order tolearn first-hand the art of gavage, the controversial liver-fattening funnelfeeding that takes place in the last weeks of the life of a foie gras goose orduck.This is a family reunion, with much catching up, and many stories to

share. The lives and work of the Gonzalez and Dubois families, and theirgeese and ducks, have been intertwined for over twenty years, linking ruralFrance and California in an agro-cosmopolitan web of transnationalconnections with links to Central America and the Middle East.1

The walls of the farm’s small processing facility are covered in immaculateglazed white tiles, and Danie, her son and business partner Gilles, and thethree young women who work with them wear regulation white protectiveclothing: white lab coats covered with thick white rubber aprons, hair netsfor the women, with Gilles wearing a jaunty paper cap. Their attire, and thepresentation of the rooms of the processing facility at their family farm,follow the strict specifications mandated by the French National VeterinaryService, the role of which is equivalent to that of the US Department ofAgriculture (USDA). Technoscience meets artisanal savoir-faire.While they work, Danie Dubois reminisces with Guillermo and Junny

about their shared experiences, the evolution of the ferme-auberge (a workingfarm and inn), their processing operation at Peyrenègre, and the Gonzalez’stravails with anti-foie gras activists and the impending California foie grasban, set to take effect in 2012. In the course of this conversation, Daniereflects on learning how to do gavage in the days when she and Guy werestarting the farm: “When I was first learning to do gavage, I threw everyoneelse out, closed the doors, and talked with the geese. They’re very talkative.I would calm myself, and focus on each one. You have to focus.”According to those in the know, successful gavage requires a certain

touch, a knack for handling the birds, akin to what laboratory scientists call“good hands.” During their year in France, Junny Gonzalez emerged as theone with this gift; Guillermo readily admits that Junny was more adept thanhe was, though he would later take on the work of funnel-feeding the ducksin California during Sonoma Foie Gras’ early years. At Peyrenègre, Junny wassoon working at Danie’s side feeding the farm’s geese, and was bestowed theultimate sign of Danie’s confidence when Junny would take on sole

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responsibility for gavage when Danie was away. Describing her work with thegeese, Junny said, “I knew each goose. I could recognize each one by the waythey talked, and I talked with them while I did the gavage.”

Foie Blog: :

Who can ever forget that scene from Never Say Never Again whenConnery shuns the hospital food they serve him and breaks out hissecret stash of Beluga caviar, quails’ eggs, vodka, and foie gras? (FoieBlog 2007)

This post is in response to the announcement that Roger Moore, SeanConnery’s successor as James Bond, had renounced his earlier indulgence,and joined the fight to ban foie gras. We will return to Moore later on, as hisvoiceover narratives for films produced by People for the Ethical Treatmentof Animals (PETA), accessible on YouTube and on the PETA website, sumup succinctly the sort of arguments widely publicized by anti-foie gras mediacampaigns. For now, however, we would like to consider the human–animalrelationships that both link and separate anti-foie gras activists and thosewho produce and consume foie gras, with attention to claims about artisanalversus industrial production.Foie gras production, distribution and consumption is both transnational

and translocal in scope, linking agrarian and urban populations, and blurringthe boundaries between artisanal and agro-industrial food commodities. Itpresents opportunities to examine ethical complexities with widerimplications. Elsewhere, we have explored the interconnections betweentechne, artisanal skill or craftsmanship, and technoscience that both defineand legitimate neo-artisanal foie gras as a luxury commodity to bedistinguished from food produced through large-scale industrial production(Heath and Meneley 2007).

From Techniques of the Body to Shared Corporeality: :

Our theoretical inspirations range from Marcel Mauss’s classic reflectionson “techniques of the body” (Mauss 2007) to more recent anthropologistsand science studies scholars, including Donna Haraway’s meditations on thecomplex “naturecultures” of human–animal relations, and science studiesscholars’ analysis of the “quasi-subjects” and “quasi-objects” that span thedivide between nature and society (Haraway 2003, 2008; Latour 1993,2004; Serres 2007; Thompson 2005). David Goodman (1999: 17–18) callsfor attention to “shared corporeality” in agro-food production and

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consumption, “the relational materiality of ecologies and bodies thatcharacterizes agro-food networks.” He couples this with a critique ofmodernist ontology that separates nature and culture, and then erases naturefrom the analysis. Similarly, we argue, the case of foie gras invites us toconsider the relations among social, technical and nonhuman animal worlds,and to examine the contested claims of those positioned differently in theseagro-food networks that link the bodies of domestic producers, farmworkers, vegan activists, and the ducks, the geese, their esophagi, their fattylivers, and those who savor or abhor them.Our argument draws on the following perspectives, focused on the

human–animal relations, and the corporeal skills and capacities that arecentral to foie gras production. First, we consider the embodiedepistemologies, both the discursive and nondiscursive ways of knowingconnecting feeder and feedee, or a foie gras detractor contemplating theexperiences of foie gras ducks or geese, in a field of co-constitutiveknowledge production. Following insights from science studies scholarssuch as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, we include ducks and geese, aswell as their organs and physiologies, as players in this field of sharedembodiments and contested technoscientific knowledge claims.Second, we frame our discussion of these ways of knowing in terms of

politico-philosophical debates about animal rights and welfare thatconsider the possibility of a relational ethics of care, a concept widelydiscussed in diverse domains of feminist theory (Noddings 1984, 2002;Sevenhuijsen 1998). Notably, for this paper, this perspective has beenadvanced by feminist animal ethics advocates (cf. Donovan and Adams2007), who have critiqued the individualist premises of animal rightstheorists such as Peter Singer (2002 [1975]). We draw on these insights(perhaps not always in ways that would please these authors), along withthose of Donna Haraway (2003, 2005, 2008) and Vinciane Despret(2004), whose work in feminist science studies has articulatedhuman–animal relations of “significant otherness,” while acknowledgingconditions of abuse or neglect—whether in the laboratory or theslaughterhouse—that sever that connection.Foie gras is a food that has been around since geese were domesticated by

the ancient Egyptians. The morality of foie gras production andconsumption has been debated for centuries; for instance, Plato thoughtthat the indulgence in fine, luxurious food like foie gras was a sign of moralturpitude, while Pliny argued that the Romans considered foie gras to be theultimate proof of human techne’s domination over nature (Ginor et al. 1999:2–7). It is obvious that foie gras has never been a staple food item nor aneutral one, but an important aspect of our argument is that there is nounitary meaning to foie gras production and consumption. Our analysiskeeps at the forefront the political, economic and gastronomic context of




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foie gras in the contemporary world, while keeping in mind that it circulatesin quite different ways in different times and places.Our paper is based not only on our analysis of the literature, under which

we include popular media and blogs, but also on our own ethnographic dataderived from our participant observation and interviews in California, NewYork, Toronto and France. In this article we aim to explore the particulardevelopment of foie gras production in the United States, where a total offour commercial farms practice what they consider to be artisanal farming,in the context of changing gourmet practices, commitments to small-scalelocal food production, debates about industrial agriculture, and animal rightsactivism.

Hudson Valley Foie Gras, Ferndale, NY: :

August 9, 2007. We are we touring the grounds at Hudson Valley Foie Grasalong with Marcus Henley, the farm’s operations manager, a former armyofficer with an MBA, who grew up on southern poultry farms, and withAlfonso Romero, who supervises the Mexican workers who do most of theanimal care. Alfonso has been with Hudson Valley for nineteen years. Alongwith the rest of his crew, he hails from the Mexican city of Puebla. First stop,the warm, well-lit barn for hatchlings, where yellow and black fluff-balls aremoving in waves across an expanse of wood shavings. We walk across greenpasture land where older ducks used to roam, before a lawsuit from theHumane Society of the United States (HSUS) raised environmentalconcerns about water pollution from urine and feces.2

We then move on to see the liver-fattening gavage, the funnel-feedingoperation that takes place during the last three weeks of the ducks’ lives. Thebarn where the ducks were housed is clean and well ventilated, with largefans moving air through the barn, and fresh wood shavings throughout. Thefeeders, Mexican laborers with correct papers, according to Marcus, areremarkable in their firm but gentle and efficient handling of the ducks.There are normally 11 ducks in each four-by-six-foot pen, all male Moulardducks with yellow and black markings, a cross between the Muscovy andPekin duck breeds, with about three people who work each line of pens.Each worker is assigned some 350 ducks to take care of for the duration ofthe gavage. This contributes both to worker accountability, with individualsreceiving bonuses for maintaining a healthy flock, and, Marcus explains, tothe wellbeing of the ducks, as regular contact with someone familiar is muchless stressful for them.The pens are open, with ample room for the ducks to move around and

flap their wings, and all the ducks in the barn are within sight of one another.The bottom of each pen is covered in absorbent wood shavings, and sits over


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a screen that permits duck droppings to pass through. Large fans remove anyaccumulated ammonia from duck excreta, and help keep the dimly-lit barncool. Hudson Valley farm products have begun to carry a “cage free” label, todistinguish their form of production from the individual battery cagesfeatured in Canadian and French industrial foie gras production (and in anti-foie gras videos widely circulated on the internet). Temple Grandin, the mostprominent North American animal scientist and ethicist who consults onhow to reduce animal pain and stress in the process of slaughter, has deemedindividual cages to be “totally unacceptable” (cited in Caro 2009: 292–3). Allfour of the US foie gras farms apparently concur, opting for a combinationof open-group pens and free-range open air habitats.There are a couple of male feeders, but Alfonso says that women are

better because they have a “smooth hand” while men have a “harsher grip.”It is notable how graceful the workers are with their fluid hand movements,and how calm and confident they are when handling and feeding the ducks.The elegant choreography of one woman’s movements is striking—it turnsout that she has been working at the farm for fifteen years. We all stop towatch appreciatively for a moment. When Deborah remarks that thewoman’s feeding technique is particularly adept. Marcus nods, watching heradmiringly. “It’s beautiful,” he adds.In the pen, the feeder sits on a stool, using one knee and a low, free-

swinging gate to separate the ducks waiting to be fed from those whosefeeding is complete. She deftly reaches for a duck, holds him firmly butgently, while tipping his beak upright and extending his neck to form astraight line. The worker quickly inserts the feeding tube, which is abouteighteen inches long and attached to a large funnel held aloft, slipping itsmoothly down the duck’s throat. She then places a measured cup of feedinto the funnel; it passes into the duck’s crop before being digested by thegizzard. The process just takes a few seconds. The duck is then released, andjoins the others on the worker’s right-hand side who have already been fed.The demeanor of the ducks is mostly calm, though they collectively quackand huddle together as the unfamiliar presence of ethnographers makes itsway between the feeding pens.We stop by another feeder, and note the way in which she strokes the

duck’s throat as she feeds him. We are struck by the contrast between thiskind of attentive human–animal co-production and some animal rightsactivists’ portrayals of gavage as torture. We ponder the skill, knowledge, andauthority that the workers seem to display, bringing to mind what MarcelMauss has called “techniques of the body,” the corporeal practices specificto a culture’s stock of knowledge (Mauss 1979 [1934]). We want to expandon Mauss’s insights to include techniques linking human and animal bodiesthrough “embodied epistemologies” embedded in the workers’ corporealtechniques and their apparent intimacy with their avian co-workers.




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Embodied Epistemologies in the Animal–Human Nexus: :

From the point of view of the foie gras home producer, once commonplaceand still to be found in rural France, the human–animal intimacy born of aclose feeder–feedee relationship is evident in the embodied practices ofholding the goose or duck between the feeder’s knees to facilitate the funnel-feeding, or gavage, that fattens the bird’s liver, producing the prized (orvilified) foie gras. Speaking of home producers of foie gras in the Périgordregion of Southwest France, where foie gras is a traditional regional specialtyof long standing, Strang notes that “many experienced goose ladies maintainthat they build up a calming and coaxing relationship with the bird,massaging the neck to help in the action and to check the state of theprocess” (Strang 2007: 65).The “goose lady,” or female feeder [gaveuse,] is both an iconic figure in the

French imaginary and a living part of rural culture on family farms, thoughtoday, in France as in North America, foie gras producers raise ducks moreroutinely than geese. For home producers on family farms, according to alocal proverb, every part of the goose or duck was utilized “except for thequack” (Strang 2007: 67). This provided essential fat and protein for thefamily, from foie gras and magret, rich breast meat, to meat for confit, meatsimmered in and stored in its own fat to preserve it.3 The gaveuses ofPérigord make an explicit connection between production (the rearing andfeeding) of the geese, and the quality of the product that is produced. “Theysay that proper care for the bird is essential to the quality of the end productand are amazed, as are most French country people, by allegations ofcruelty” (Strang 2007: 65).On family-run farms in Southwest France, farmers who market their foie

gras are well-aware of recent critiques that equate their craft with animalsuffering, or with conditions associated with large-scale agro-industrialproduction, and take pains in their promotional material to insist on theircommitments to tradition, and to the wellbeing of their animals. The websitefor a family-owned farm in the region, La Ferme de Souleilles, describesducks raised outside “with respect for the environment and for the wellbeingof the animals,” and quotes a gaveuse named Raymonde, who firmly asserts,“A good feeder loves animals [and] adapts [her] handling technique to treatthe animal gently, to establish a relationship of trust” [our translation]. Thiscareful treatment, the site says, is the mark of a respectful, traditionalfattening process, and, moreover, is essential in producing quality foie gras.4

We note here, and will develop below, that this farm-worker’s claims aboutthe relationship between the physio-emotional wellbeing of her ducks andthe quality of their meat are borne out, albeit in different terms, in reportsby attentive chefs, vendors and animal scientists. See, for example,Chambers and Grandin (2001), and the website of US foie gras vendor


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D’Artagnan, where one heading reads, “Why humane animal husbandrymakes more than good sense, it makes good meat” (see https://www.dartagnan.com/prodinfo.asp).France is the world’s largest foie gras producer, with records of foie gras

production in Southwest France dating back to the eighteenth century(Duhart 2004). Notwithstanding European Union restrictions and theinterventions of French anti-foie gras groups like Stop Gavage(www.stopgavage.com), French consumer demand continues to exceed whatthe country produces. In 2003, France produced about 16,400 metrictonnes of foie gras, representing the efforts of some 30,000 producers,ranging from small family-run farms to large-scale operations (CIFOG 2005:9). In 1999, France successfully secured the European Union’s “ProtectedGeographical Indication” (PGI) designation for duck foie gras fromSouthwest France, with a PGI application for goose foie gras in theSouthwest pending as of 2009 (cf. Duhart 2001; Jullien and Smith 2008;Téchoueyres 2007). In 2006, French national lawmakers resoundinglypassed a resolution, Article L654-27-1 of the French Rural Code,designating both duck and goose foie gras a protected part of France’scultural and gastronomic patrimony.This use of cultural–historical distinctiveness vis-à-vis other countries in

the European Union is indicative, according to Michaela DeSoucey (2010),of what she calls “gastronationalism,” in which comestibles linked to localplace or terroir index national distinctiveness within the context oftransnational political economies. However, Jullien and Smith paint a ratherdarker picture of the implementation of the PGI, which serves to promotethe interests of the newer intensive foie gras operations over those of theartisanal producers (Jullien and Smith 2008: 192). It can be argued thatfrom the 1990s onwards, the introduction of pneumatic feeding machines inFrance, along with battery cages tailored for high-throughput feedingoperations, served to alter the more intimate human–animal shared bodytechniques of hand feeding. Ginor et al. make a similar point aboutindustrialized foie gras production in France:

The feeder rapidly inserts the tube, presses a button to commencethe automatic feed process, and moves on to the next bird. (Thespeed of this method allows each worker to relate to each bird aboutas much as a soda factory worker relates to a bottle.) (Ginor et al.1999: 80)5

The transformations in French foie gras production serve also to separatethe production from the processing, as ducks raised for the largecommercial foie gras companies are often no longer processed on the farmswhere they were reared, but are shipped to specialized manufacturers.Jullien and Smith (2008: 188) remind us that Strang’s figure of the gaveuse




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represents a dwindling aspect of agriculture in rural France. By contrast, inNorth America, foie gras production is a late twentieth-century newcomerand it remains a minor player, at the levels of both production andconsumption, in relation to large-scale agro-industrial poultry farming inthe United States and to increasingly industrialized foie gras production inFrance. There are just four commercial foie gras producers in the UnitedStates (in California, Minnesota and New York), and three in Quebec,Canada. The first US farms were launched by El Salvadoran and Israeliimmigrants on each coast in the mid-1980s, marking the transnationalknowledge flows that link traditional place-based techne to global networksof production and consumption.As noted above, Sonoma Foie Gras was launched by El Salvadoran

immigrants Guillermo and Junny Gonzalez following a year’s apprenticeshipwith the Dubois family, traditional goose foie gras producers, in the Périgordregion of Southwest France. Opting for a smaller farm in northernCalifornia, rather than a larger operation with partners in El Salvador, theyconsulted with agricultural extension agent and avian scientist Dr FrancineBradley at the University of California at Davis about modern poultryproduction.As they launched their farm in 1985, the Gonzalezes came to identify with

the emerging farm-to-table movement, with its focus on fresh, locally grownmeats and produce, linking a new breed of farmer with California foodies,like rising chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley—the beginnings ofwhat would become a self-styled neo-artisanal response to agro-industrialfood production (cf. Guthman 2004).6

During the same time period, in the Catskill Mountains northwest of NewYork City, Israeli immigrant Izzy Yanay and his business partner MichaelGinor, son of Israeli immigrants, launched Hudson Valley Foie Gras, now thelargest of the four US producers. Yanay brought modern foie gras productiontechniques from Israel, which at that time was a significant foie grasproducer.7 In this case, too, the young entrepreneurs forged connections withother rising entrepreneurial foodies, includingAriane Daguin, a young womanborn in Gascony, in Southwest France, whose father André is a chef well-known throughout France for his foie gras artistry and innovative culinaryskills. (André Daguin is credited, for instance, as the first chef to grill duck orgoose breast, magret, rare, serving it like steak.) The website for Ariane’s foodcompany D’Artagnan, proclaims, “It all started with an American foie gras.”After meeting up with the fledging principals of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, shelaunched her now highly respected business, a company “of, by, and forfoodies” that markets organic, sustainably and humanely run producers ofmeats, including foie gras (see https://www.dartagnan.com/standfor.asp).The emergence of foie gras production in the United States has been

articulated with a moral discourse of embodied distinction, staking claim to


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quality, to healthy, locally-produced food, and to a critique of conventionalagro-industrial food production. The D’Artagnan site has a link marked withthe emblematic French proverbial tribute to foie gras ducks and geese,“Everything But the Quack,” leading to a page entitled “What is sustainablefarming and why does it matter?” It discusses the company’s commitment tosustainable farming, and provides links to their vendors, including theirthree North American foie gras vendors, Sonoma Foie Gras, Hudson ValleyFoie Gras, and one of the three companies in Quebec. As the D’Artagnanwebsite explains:

We at D’Artagnan believe that sustainable farming is simply theresponsible practice of meeting our common need for good, clean,delicious & nutritional food without endangering the future.This means raising livestock humanely on natural foods, clean

water, in environments that are open, but provide protection fromthe elements where necessary. It also means not using antibiotics,growth hormones, artificial preservatives, or animal byproducts.Established on the principles of procuring the freshest, cleanest

and most natural products, D’Artagnan has long been a supporter ofsmall farms, usually run by a single family who believe and practicesustainable farming. They care for their animals using good moraljudgment and don’t see them simply as a means of profit.(https://www.dartagnan.com/farming.asp)

While US foie gras producers have aligned themselves with a locally-focusedcritique of industrial agro-food production, their critics frame the nation’sfoie gras farmers as part of their campaigns against factory farming. And ifthe feeder’s patience, dexterity and communication with her ducks or geesecharacterizes successful gavage from the perspective of foie gras producersand some of their observers, anti-foie gras activists depict thishuman–animal relationship as an exploitative source of suffering, a critiquegrounded, according to foie gras producers, chefs and food writers, in anunwarranted anthropomorphic identification.8

Anti-foie gras activists regularly refer to foie gras producers as “factoryfarmers” industries (cf Pacelle 2007), thereby invoking the widespreadcritiques that raise animal welfare issues associated with large-scaleoperations such as those related to beef, pork and chicken production(Schlosser 2001; Pollan 2006; Striffler 2007). HSUS, for example, includesfoie gras critiques in its factory farming campaign. Foie gras producers in theUnited States assert instead that they represent artisan farmers couplingtraditional techniques with a contemporary commitment to sustainableagriculture. Their nascent lobbying association is called the Artisan FarmersAlliance, and its members make an effort to present evidence of ways inwhich they differ from large-scale industrial poultry producers. Testifying




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before the US House agricultural subcommittee, Sonoma Foie Gras’Guillermo Gonzales (2007) said, “Last year, I raised 50,000 ducks. To putthis in perspective, a modern poultry plant processes more birds in a singleeight-hour shift than I do in an entire year.”

Hudson Valley Foie Gras, Ferndale, NY: :

August 9, 2007. Sat in Marcus Henley’s office near his duck barns. Marcusgestures towards a large framed black and white vintage photo on the wallbehind him, depicting an elderly rural French woman with a goose betweenher knees and a long-necked funnel in one hand, the traditional feedingimplement used to fatten the goose’s liver. Both the woman, in her role asgoose feeder, and her feeding funnel are known in French as gaveuse, the onewho carries out the funnel-feeding of foie gras geese or ducks. Marcus pointsto the picture to illustrate that the goose does, after all, exercise free will inthe gavage process. “Now Granny,” he says, referencing the goose in thecorner, or wherever, “weighs about ninety pounds and the goose weighsabout thirty. If the goose didn’t want to be there, it wouldn’t be there.”Marcus uses this anecdote to give a rendition of the philosophy andpractices of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, and to recount what he describes asdisinformation and misinformation that critics circulate about foie gras.Marcus suggests that foie gras was an “easy sell” for the activists because

people tend to anthropomorphize the feeding process, imagining what itwould be like to have a tube stuck down their own throats. In reality, hesays, feeding ducks is really not at all like intubating humans, givendifferences in duck and human anatomy. To illustrate his point, he calls upa PETA website on his computer, and shows us a striking photographicimage of a woman at an outdoor café with a man putting a huge orangefunnel and a feeding tube down her throat (http://blog.peta.org/archives/2007/08/the_worlds_firs_2.php). Posted on PETA’s US website just the daybefore our visit, this posting was part of an anti-foie gras demonstrationlaunched by PETA Germany. The activists, he says, do whatever they canto encourage people to envision themselves as the object of the funnel-feeding process.What we encountered at Hudson Valley may have differed from domestic

production of foie gras, where a housewife is responsible for a goose or two;yet we did see the horrors of “factory farming” described on anti-foie graswebsites. Marcus noted that he was exposed to the conditions of the poultryindustry when he was just six years old, at his uncle’s chicken farm inArkansas. He drew on this early familiarity with the poultry business,working as a supervisor at a chicken farm where they processed 250,000chickens a day. In contrast to this experience, he explained that at Hudson


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Valley Foie Gras, they process 250,000 ducks a year or roughly 700 ducks aday. “And we’re the big guy in the US,” he said.While the production levels and consumer base remain miniscule in

relation to large-scale production of other meats in North America, foie grasproducers have been the target of concerted, sometimes dramatic, and onoccasion lawlessly destructive attacks by foie gras opponents in recent years.Although legislatures in Maine, Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Illinois,Connecticut, Maryland and New York have recently considered and rejectedproposals to ban foie gras production or sales, legislation in 2006 banned foiegras sales in Chicago (though it was repealed in May 2008), and Californialaw SB1520, outlawing foie gras sales and production, is still slated to takeeffect in 2012. Opponents like HSUS and Farm Sanctuary, backing effortsto secure legal prohibition, regularly depict the liver-fattening that producesthe eponymous foie gras as a cruel and inhumane process inflicting pain andsuffering on ducks and geese.

The Naturecultures of Foie Gras: Natural or Pathological?: :

Is foie gras simply the adaptation of the natural physiology and anatomy ofweb-footed waterfowl like ducks and geese? Or is it intrinsically cruel andinhumane, evidence of the worst malfeasances of industrial agro-foodproduction? Food professionals and researchers specializing in avian sciencehave argued that the techne of foie gras production takes advantage of thenatural inclination of ducks and geese to eat voraciously in order to fattentheir own livers as energy storage for migration, and of their particularphysiological capacities to do so. As food historian Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat asserts, “The goose itself invented cramming” (Toussaint-Samat 2005:424).Here the specific physiological capabilities of palmipedes, as web-footed

waterfowl like ducks and geese are known, can be seen as zoötechnologies,enhanced by the intervention of the humans who hand-feed them aprepared mixture of corn. Hence, the foie gras which has been a prized foodcommodity for gourmands since ancient Egypt, is described as food rootedin the nature of the goose or duck, extracted by human techne, cultivated,at its most successful, through a close human–animal bond. In the war ofwords, or worlds, surrounding foie gras, those on both sides of thecontroversy patrol the border between the natural and the pathological.Critics denounce foie gras as “pathological” or “diseased,” and its advocatesoffer a diametrically opposed set of arguments, each side staking claims towhat is “natural,” or true, or not. We turn, then, to the contested truth-claimsabout the nature of ducks and geese, their shared embodiments and thenatural-cultural environments that they occupy.




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Sonoma Foie Gras’ Duck Farm, Farmington, CA: :

November 8, 2007. The farm where Sonoma Foie Gras leases space to raiseits ducks is marked off by chain-link fence topped with razor-wire, postedwith signs that read “Stop! Keep Out! Biosecure Area” in Spanish,Vietnamese, Chinese and English. There are no other signs—nothingindicating that chickens or ducks are being raised on the farm is in evidence,perhaps not surprising, given the history of raids by on the farm by videocam-toting animal activists. Then again, Guillermo and his wife Junny still runtheir company’s marketing operation from Sonoma, where they ran the farmthemselves in its earlier days.As in our earlier e-mails and phone conversations, Guillermo Gonzalez

strikes me as cordial, open, and helpful, if somewhat beleaguered by hisstruggles with his adversaries, both those taking their battle against foie grasto the courts, and those engaging in vandalism and guerrilla tactics. Hebegins the tour right away, gesturing to a grove of trees alongside the road.He points out what I hadn’t noticed at first: in the shade of the trees, theground is dotted with hundreds of white mounds (see Figure 1). As he putsit, “The ducks come out here to the walnut orchard after they’re throughfeathering, once their feathers are in and they can withstand the elements”.He explains that the ducklings, hatched at a local duck farm from eggsimported from France, which arrive in batches every two weeks, spend theirfirst few weeks in the warm hatchery, which we visit soon thereafter. At fiveto seven weeks, once their feathers are in, they come to live and forageunder the walnut trees, living a “free-range” life until they are twelve orthirteen weeks old, when the gavage begins. The gavage at Sonoma FoieGras lasts from fourteen to seventeen days, shorter than Hudson Valley’stwenty-eight day period. During the gavage period, the ducks are housed ingroup pens, the historical norm in Southwest France (Duhart 2009) wherehe and his wife Junny apprenticed. The pens have enough room for eachgroup of ducks to move around, socialize, and to flap their wings, “a sign ofsatisfaction,” as Guillermo describes it in a later conversation, in which heexplains why he personally doesn’t favor the battery cages still used outsidethe United States. (Though still widely used by the biggest foie grasenterprises in France, the cages will be banned by European Unionmandate as of 2015.)Sir Roger Moore has narrated an anti-foie gras video entitled “Ducks and

Geese: Force-fed to Death” (see http://www.goveg.com/feat/foie/). It openswith footage of wild birds skimming across a lake, and swimming in a pond.After celebrating the beauty and athleticism of these ducks in the wild,Moore tells us, “On today’s foie gras farms ducks are denied their everydesire … They will never breathe fresh air or feel sun on their backs.” Thefilm soon cuts to clips of caged foie gras ducks undergoing commercial


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gavage in rows of battery cages, apparently shot on large farms in France orCanada, as all of the US farms keep their ducks in reasonably spaciouscollective pens during gavage. With this visual juxtaposition betweenfreedom in the wild and agricultural captivity, the narrative continues:

On foie gras farms around the world, as revolting as it is to eat ananimal’s diseased organ, the cruel treatment of the birds is evenmore disturbing. Foie gras, which means fatty liver, is a painfuldisease that should be treated by a veterinarian, but is insteadcruelly and intentionally induced…Ducks and geese on foie gras farms are confined to tiny crates and

cages that are often so small that the birds can’t spread a single wing.They’re packed into dark, filthy sheds where they live surrounded bytheir own waste without access to so much as a blade of grass or abreath of fresh air.

Moore tells his audience that foie gras is a “disease, not a delicacy.” This isan assertion widely used in the anti-foie gras campaigns of organizationssuch as HSUS and Farm Sanctuary, as well as by veterinarians like Dr HollyCheever who have served as their consultants. Cheever, an equineveterinarian in upstate New York, has testified on animal abuse to the NewYork state police, and is on the board of the Humane Society VeterinaryMedical Association, formed in 2008 when HSUS and the Association of



Figure 1. Free-Range Ducks in Walnut Orchard, Sonoma Foie Gras, © Deborah

Heath, 2007.


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Veterinarians for Animal Rights joined forces against what both advocacygroups see as the “industry-biased positions” of the mainstream AmericanVeterinary Medical Association (AVMA).9

To date, the AVMA has not taken a position for or against foie gras. Behindthis apparent neutrality lie a number of years of contention between theAVMA’s Animal Welfare Committee, which has advocated opposition to foiegras production, and the general membership’s house of delegates. The issuecame to a head in 2005 when delegates rejected the foie gras banrecommended by the Animal Welfare Committee and the AVMA’s executiveboard, calling for more research. New Jersey veterinarian Robert Gordondrew applause from the floor for his report on a visit to Hudson Valley FoieGras, in which he chastened board members for not having done first-handresearch. “They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Well, my feeling is thatseeing with your eyes and asking questions is worth more,” he says. “Afterbeing on the premises, my view and my position changed dramatically.Taking the rectal temperature of a cat is more stressful than feeding thesebirds” (Fiala 2005).Among the most outspoken of the anti-foie gras veterinarians in the

United States, Cheever has worked with animal rights groups in seekinglegislation to ban foie gras. Farm Sanctuary flew Cheever to Chicago in 2005to testify on behalf of the proposed anti-foie gras ordinance, her testimonyportraying foie gras ducks in graphic terms as mistreated and diseased,capping off her testimony by saying, “I would just as soon eat out of a catboxas eat a liver from one of those diseased animals” (Caro 2009: 131).Cheever’s letter sent to the San Diego city council in 2006, part of animalrights groups’ efforts to secure a municipal ban there, also made extensiveuse of the idiom of disease. In her words:

To create this diseased organ (hepatic lipidosis), Mulard ducks (ahybrid, non-natural breed) are forcibly restrained three times a daywhile a rough steel pipe is forced down their esophagi. The handlerpours a fatty, corn-rich gruel down their gullets, causing extensivetrauma to their esophagi in the process. After a few days of thisabnormal feeding, the birds’ livers become heavily infiltrated with fatand the resulting metabolic illness they suffer causes them tobecome too ill to walk. (Cheever 2006) [emphasis added]

In contrast to Cheever’s comments, Guillermo Gonzales invokes both thelived experience of the artisan farmer and the legitimating power oftechnoscientific expertise in responding to activists’ critiques, noting that the“age-old farming methods” used by Sonoma Foie Gras and the othermembers of the Artisan Farmers Alliance have been studied in depth by bothscientists and veterinarians. Gonzales asserts “While we farmers focus onthe objective science, we are attacked on the basis of emotional appeals”


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(Gonzalez 2007). He finishes by noting that some of those acting in thename of animal welfare have overlooked “the welfare of human farmers,” forwhom, he says, animal welfare is always a primary concern.The website for Sonoma Foie Gras describes foie gras as “physiological not

pathological” and offers links to statements from veterinary and scientificexperts about the physiology and anatomy of geese and ducks to support thisassertion (www.sonomafoiegras.com). Avian scientists and other advocatesnote that ducks, geese and other waterfowl lack a gag reflex, and that theiresophagi are tough, lined with the protein keratin for extra protection, andthat the esophagus is particularly flexible and expandable (Guémené andGuy 2004; Guémené et al. 2006a, 2006b, 2007).Along with the notorious fatty liver, the esophagus of foie gras ducks and

geese, ground zero for the act of gavage, is a primary site of contentionamong those most ardently vested in this issue. Again, Sir Roger Moore’svideo narrative presents the prosecutorial case:

Imagine having pipes jammed down your throat … The pipes scrapealong the inside of the terrified bird’s throat, causing intense pain,bruising, and deep gashes … Investigations into foie gras farms inthe United States and Europe have all turned up the same thing:sick, dead and dying animals, many with holes punched throughtheir necks.

Along with this vivid depiction of animal abuse, Moore insinuates that foiegras farms in the United States and Europe are universal in theirmistreatment of animals.Preparing for a recent visit to Hudson Valley Foie Gras, journalist Sarah

DiGregorio (2009) contacted veterinarian Holly Cheever for input about herstory. After informing DiGregorio that she would be faced with an “elaboratecover-up” and would not be allowed to see the worst evidence of abusedducks, Cheever gave several instances of the kinds of signs of mistreatmentand poor health that DiGregorio should look for. “I am disturbed by therough handling that creates myriad lesions,” Dr Cheever said, among them“esophageal scarring” and esophagi that are “blown open.”DiGregorio spent a day touring the Hudson Valley facilities, observing the

following:

I was at the farm for five hours, all told. I saw thousands of ducks,but not a drop of duck vomit. I didn’t see an animal that was havinga hard time breathing or walking, or a duck with a bloodied beak orblown-open esophagus. I did see one dead duck. (DiGregorio 2009:3)

Toward the end of her tour, DiGregorio watched the on-site slaughterprocess, commenting that “It’s not pleasant, but not as difficult to watch




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as you might think. And if I can’t deal with it, I shouldn’t be eatingmeat.” She then recalled Cheever’s admonitions about injuries to theesophagus

Soon afterward, I remembered to ask to see the esophagi removed fromthe slaughtered birds so I could check if they’d been damaged … RickBishop, Hudson Valley’s marketing director, plunged his bare hand intothe bin and brought up a floppy, yellowish tube. It was stretchy,smooth, glossy, and thick. He turned part of it inside out, and I lookedfor abrasions, punctures, and bruises—anything that a layperson couldidentify as a sign that this esophagus had lived a tortured life. Nothing.I looked at several more esophagi plucked randomly from the bin, andall of them were pale pinkish-yellow and intact—no wounds, no blood,and no bruises or scrapes. (DiGregorio 2009: 4)

Dr Jeanne Smith, a Californian veterinarian and poultry specialist, providedthe testimony below based on an official inspection in 2004 of the farmowned by Sonoma Foie Gras, presented as evidence during hearings onCalifornia Senate Bill 1520, the measure that would ban foie grasproduction in California. Smith notes in her letter that she arranged the visiton short notice. Observations from what was her first visit to a foie grasfacility present counter-evidence to the widely touted claims by anti-foiegras organizations and bloggers that foie gras is “diseased liver,” and that thefattened liver causes respiratory distress. As she states:

Although I saw birds with enlarged livers, I saw no birds showingclinical signs of liver disease. Droppings appeared normal, therewere no birds showing neurologic signs, and there was no evidenceof regurgitation of food.Contrary to what the opponents to foie gras production say, an

enlarged liver will not cause respiratory signs in a duck. The liverenlarges downward into the abdomen, not upward impinging on theheart and lungs. The air sacs primarily lie in the dorsal or back areaof the bird’s thorax and abdomen and by looking at these ducks youcan see that the enlarged liver droops downward away from the backarea. (Smith 2004)

Just above, Smith approvingly notes that the size of the feeding tube forgavage was appropriate, observing that, based on her experience withtherapeutically tube-feeding birds, small tubes actually increased the risk ofdamage to the esophagus. She also comments that she had visited hundredsof poultry facilities in the past, and was immediately impressed with theclean buildings, air quality, and clean water at the Sonoma Foie Gras facility,saying that “conditions in these houses would rank them in the top five ofpoultry houses I’ve been in.”


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The struggle over whether foie gras is natural or pathological has pittedresearchers the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique(INRA) against French activists who assert that the scientists merelyspeak on behalf of the foie gras industry (Comiti 2006). Articles by INRAavian scientists survey published scientific research responding to thecharge that foie gras is “diseased” liver, underscoring what they depict asfalse analogies between the physiology of humans and palmipedes(Guémené and Guy 2004; Guémené et al. 2006a). As activists use theterm, “hepatic steatosis” (the neutral biomedical term for fatty liver)describes a diseased liver tout court. (In one colorful instance, aveterinarian who consults for PETA has called foie gras “hepatic steatosison toast.”).Avian scientists at INRA, on the other hand, argue that while human

hepatic steatosis is pathological in humans, the result, for instance, ofalcoholic cirrhosis, in birds, the liver, rather than adipose tissue, is theprimary site of fat synthesis. Furthermore, in the wild, waterfowl and somefish synthesize fat to store energy for migration. Moreover, research studiesindicate that, also unlike human diseased liver, both this form of “natural”hepatic steatosis, and its induced variant in foie gras ducks and geese, arefully reversible (Benard et al. 2006; Guémené et al. 2006a).Articles reviewing evidence from a range of peer-reviewed animal science

journals include studies presenting measurements of avian stress hormonesfollowing force-feeding (Guémené et al. 2006a, 2006b). Assessing bloodlevels of corticosterone, which is produced by the outer layer of the adrenalgland under conditions of stress, both before and after gavage, studies showan initial increase following a bird’s initiation to being funnel-fed, followedby a return to normal levels as the feeding routine becomes familiar. Mulardducks in particular respond fearfully to human strangers, and show lowerlevels of avoidance with familiar feeders.These technoscientific data find support in reports of animal behavior

from traditional foie gras farms, where intimacy between feeder and bird,and familiarity with quotidian routine, including gavage, apparently serve tomitigate the birds’ experience of stress, as we see in this account from oneToronto chef about how his French grandmother familiarized her geese withthe gavage process. Specifically, he states:

Marc Thuet … probably knows more about force-feeding than anyother chef in Toronto. He grew up in Alsace, an area famous for itsfoie gras, watching his grandmother force-feed the Christmas goose,holding it tight between her knees and massaging its neck by hand.“At the beginning, what a struggle!” recalls Thuet. “They are nastyanimals. Nasty. But after three feeds, they would try to putthemselves between anyone’s legs.” (Chapman 2007)




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In contrast to the smaller scale and intimate human attention given to thebirds at Hudson Valley and other members of the Artisan Farmers Alliance,Marcus Henley provides an account of his time on the large chicken farm inArkansas where a chicken would be kept in a cage with 499 of its peers andthen, in his words, “Bam! They’re dumped out of the cage in a pile at theprocessing plant.” According to Marcus, some 300 of the 250,000 chickensprocessed each day would die as a result of injuries. While both the scale ofproduction by the US foie gras farms and their mortality rate are small bycomparison, critiques of the rather more severe depredations of theindustrial poultry farms like the one where Marcus worked receive far lessattention than the more dramatic demonstrations against foie gras.The “rationalization” of industrial production increases the risk that

animals may be treated as things, with less regard for their comfort andwellbeing. Both traditional production techniques and the smaller-scaleproduction of neo-artisanal producers focus on intimate, ongoing relationsbetween animals and their caretakers, with an investment in an “ethics ofcare.” This extends to an “ethics of quality,” whereby producers andconsumers become involved in relationships of trust. Artisanal producersclaim that the ethical care invested in the rearing of their animals producesa superior product, as they, like other artisanal producers in the UnitedStates (see the work on artisanal cheese makers by Heather Paxson, 2006),present themselves as creative entrepreneurs who are able to deliver a top-quality commodity to customers who trust them.Customers affirm this relationship of trust by personal knowledge. As

asserted by one Canadian chef speaking of his relationship with a localQuebecois foie gras producer: “You’re not going to stop breeding dogs justbecause one owner mistreated his pet.” So says Marc Thuet, who spendshundreds of dollars on Aux Champs d’Élisé’s livers for his eponymousrestaurant each week. “Why would I give up eating foie gras when I knowthe liver is coming from François?” he asks, referring to Élisé François, whoowns the farm. “The guy has a passion. I’ve seen his barns and they’reclean.”10 Thuet articulates an ideology that is very popular among foodiesand environmentalists these days, that personal knowledge of localproducers allows the acquisition of superior products, without the “carbonfootprint” of importing foodstuffs from long distances, and supporting local,small producers against large agribusiness with questionable reputations forcleanliness and ethical animal handling.In the anti-foie gras discourse, the worst aspects of the “factory farm” are

stressed, reminiscent of Marx’s critique of the horrors of the industrialfactories of the eighteenth century. Yet in contrast to Marx’s evocativeadvocacy for what industrial production was doing to the workers, in muchof the animal rights literature, what “factory farms” are doing to humanlaborers disappears. In contrast to the farm and artisanal producers, who


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stress the human–avian connection via the embodied practices of feedingand inseminating, the narratives of the anti foie gras activists, humans aredepicted either as dehumanized agents of cruelty or heroic or empathicagents of opposition. On one website, the human feeder has had his faceblocked out as if he were a common criminal. The suffering of animalstakes precedence over whatever human suffering may also be aconsequence of factory farming. For instance, following an interview withanthropologist Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The DangerousTransformation of America’s Favorite Food (Striffler 2007) an ethnography ofindustrial chicken farming, a Toronto-based organization, Animal Voices,revealed that many of the listeners objected to Striffler’s focus on thelaborers in the Arkansas chicken factories, rather than the chickens’“experiences and treatments.”This focus on animal “experiences” is developed by vegan advocate

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, former psychoanalyst and author of The Face onYour Plate: The Truth about Food (Masson 2009a), who argues that weshould not eat ducks because they form relationships with each other.Masson likewise deems geese to be inedible because they are monogamous.This perspective asserts a metaphorical equivalence between waterfowl andpeople, in which their edibility is determined by their likeness to us, or ourideal human counterparts (i.e. demonstrated monogamy and the capacity tosustain relationships). From the perspective of many farmers (and perhapssome polyamorous omnivores), as well as numerous accounts from non-Western cultures, treating animals well and respectfully does not precludeeating them. To be sure, there is still no universalist assumption whichholds that assigning or recognizing human qualities in animals is a soundbasis for determining the mode of relationship between humans andanimals, regardless of whether they are predatory or caring or both. AsDonna Haraway argues, “multispecies flourishing requires a robustnonanthropomorphic sensibility that is accountable to irreducibledifferences” (Haraway 2007: 90).The position of the artisanal foie gras producers is closer to this stance

than is that of some of their opponents, whose unilateral focus on animalrights overlooks the relational contexts within which responsible animalhusbandry might occur. On the other end of the spectrum, however, fromthe perspective of some of the most ardent gastronomic fan of foie gras, thehuman–avian nexus is also denied, as the following critique demonstrates:

An additional argument, that the (gastronomic) end justifies themeans, is exemplified in a quotation given by the Laroussegastronomique from an author writing about traditional foods anddishes of Alsace: “The goose is nothing, but man has made of it aninstrument for the output of a marvelous product, a kind of living




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hothouse in which there grows the supreme fruit of gastronomy.”(Davidson 2006: 311)

This quote indicates a strong connection between production style and endproduct. However, instead of foie gras being described as a “diseased organ,”it is described as “the supreme fruit of gastronomy.” In contrast to thoseanimal rights activists who marginalize the agency of humans, here theagency of the palmipedes is denied, as is the human–animal co-productionof foie gras. In highlighting the “genius” of human techne, the author is ableto assert that the goose is nothing but a “hothouse” which can be exploitedby “man” for his own pleasure.

A Contested Ethics of Care: :

In 2008 in Portland, Oregon, the food scene was heating up, and not onlybecause the hip young chefs in its lively restaurant scene were capturingheadlines among national food writers. After a four-year hiatus, foie grasprotests were back, and the Portland Animal Defense League (PADL)mobilized its hit list, targeting a number of rising restaurateurs whose stylishmenus included the transgressive fatty liver. One of these chefs was NaomiPomeroy, who owns the restaurant Beast, then right across the street fromthe local office of In Defense of Animals. A practicing vegetarian for severalyears, Pomeroy champions farm-to-table connections that include meat fromlocal producers. She made waves with ads for her restaurant featuring acontroversial photo of her holding a deceased pig over her shoulder (Figure2).11

Some people write or call and say it’s beautiful. Others have calledus murderous jerks … I understand how, when you are a vegetarian,it can be hard to be bombarded with images like that. I was avegetarian for seven years, so I know. But, at the same time, it’s like,Hey, people, meet your food. Every animal product you eat was oncealive. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I respect that, but youshouldn’t be eating it. (Davis 2008)

Though Pomeroy was perhaps not surprised to hear that she was in theprotesters’ cross-hairs, she expressed some bemusement about their focus onfoie gras. As she told Portland food writer Patrick Alan Coleman (2008):

“It’s an heirloom product. Nobody eats four ounces of foie gras, it’sa treasure. There is a certain amount of reverence around this.” Shesuggests protesters are misguided and questions why they aren’tpicketing restaurants serving factory farm-produced beef, which shesays is “causing widespread destruction around the world.”


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“Trying to persuade all of Portland’s restaurants to go vegan is not awinning campaign,” [a PADL spokesperson] responds. “Microcampaigns are easier to meet.”

For the principals of the key organizations leading the anti-foie grascampaigns in the United States, meat, humanely raised or not, is not food.Dedicated vegan activists like PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk, Farm Sanctuary’sGene Baur, and Wayne Pacelle of HSUS, see meat, egg and dairy productionas animal exploitation. Ingrid Newkirk’s Facebook page carries the slogan“Meat is murder.” When Wayne Pacelle became HSUS CEO in 2004, theWashington Post ran an article “Vegan in The Henhouse: Wayne Pacelle,Putting Animals On (and Off) the Table”—coverage that Pacelle openlydiscusses on the HSUS website.An ideological divide among animal advocates separates a more

mainstream “animal welfare” position from those who militate for “animalrights,” the latter following, among others, the arguments advocated by



Figure 2. “Woman Meets Beast” © Alicia J. Rose. Portland Chef Naomi Pomeroy

with Dead Pig.


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philosopher Peter Singer, beginning with his book Animal Liberation (Singer2002 [1975]). Both their detractors and animal rights advocates themselvesalso use the term “abolitionist” to describe the more militant end of themovement, referring to their ultimate aim to abolish animal agriculture,along with other activities seen as exploiting nonhuman animals.For vegan activists like Pacelle, Baur and Newkirk, their anti-foie gras

campaigns’ popular successes is a wedge issue, with potential to raiseawareness about farming conditions and meat consumption more generally,issues that groups like those listed above have continued to pursue, but oftendrawing less attention. Tricia Barry, spokesperson for Farm Sanctuary, toldjournalist Mark Caro that foie gras was “low hanging fruit,” making it mucheasier to recruit sympathetic opposition than for other agro-food campaigns,because, according to Farm Sanctuary’s director Gene Baur, “Many peoplecan look at [foie gras] and agree with us because they’re not complicit in theproblem … but because most people are complicit in the other abuses,they’re less likely to want to address them” (Caro 2009: 112).There are no foie gras restaurant protests in France, where foie gras is sold

in supermarkets (currently the largest market for French producers), andwhere some towns host weekly marchés gras—outdoor markets devotedentirely to foie gras, where small producers sell directly to the public.However, the most prominent anti-foie gras group in France, Bordeaux-based Stop Gavage, is the strategic brainchild of a vegan activist grouplooking for an effective means to get the attention of its carnivorous fellowcitizens. Stop Gavage is linked to L214, a self-described group ofvegan/vegetarian militants. It takes its name from the 1976 animalprotection measure in the French Rural Code, Article L214-1, whichdescribes animals as “sentient beings” deserving protection. In an interviewwith historical anthropologist Frédéric Duhart, Antoine Comiti, founder ofStop Gavage, pinpoints the meeting when this strategy was hatched:

Really concretely, this took place at a meeting of animal rightsmilitants during the summer of 2003. We thought, beyond posingthe animal problem in general, couldn’t we do a campaign on aspecific topic in order to concretely illustrate the effect its practiceshave on animals?And after thinking about it, we decided to go after foie gras, as it

is really emblematic of extreme treatment of animals: the tube, thebattery cages, and then fattening to the max and killing it for a dishthat’s in no way necessary.Lots of people think meat is necessary to life and good health.

Even if that’s false, it’s still a widespread idea. But nobody caninsist that foie gras is necessary to live a healthy life … It’sdespicable, and at the same time raises the cultural question about


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meat, liver, meat in the culture more generally. (Duhart 2009; ourtranslation)

Ingrid Newkirk, British-born founder of PETA, is, like Antoine Comiti, anardent supporter of veganism for whom strategic opposition to foie grasserves a larger mission. She released her last will and testament in March2009, detailing the disposition of her remains to PETA USA, withsuggestions for using its various parts to advance Newkirk’s and PETA’scauses. Her recommendations, which appear on the PETA website, includethe following, among them a bequest to Comiti’s native land (Newkirk2009):

a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for ahuman barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse isall flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being oranother animal, and that flesh foods are not needed …

f. That my liver be vacuum-packed and shipped, in whole or in part,to France, to there be used in a public appeal to persuade shoppersnot to support the vile practice of force-feeding geese and ducks forfoie gras.

Given Ingrid Newkirk’s theatrical flair in the service of a meatless world,many were surprised, and some outraged, when, in 2004, PETA gave itsProggy Visionary award for progress towards animal rights to Dr TempleGrandin, an animal scientist well-known as a consultant on slaughterhouseand feedlot design. Newkirk, praising Grandin’s work when this award wasgiven, said:

Dr Grandin has been an ally of those who are trying to improveconditions for the farmed animals we can’t save from certain death.We would prefer that no animals be killed for food, but we can’tignore the horrors of factory farms and slaughterhouses because wewish that they didn’t exist. In the fight for improved living and dyingconditions, farmed animals have no better ally than Dr TempleGrandin. (PETA 2004)

Temple Grandin has been widely recognized for her interventions withrespect to animal welfare, and is co-author of a widely circulated brochureentitled “Guidelines for Humane Handling, Transport and Slaughter ofLivestock” (Chambers and Grandin 2001) that details the effects of animalstress on meat quality, and which underscores the importance ofunderstanding the specificities of animal perception (vision, hearing, smell)in following handling practices that mitigate stress.As an indication of the kind of curious alliance politics that might foster

a constructive dialogue about an ethics of care that could span current fault




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lines, it is worth noting that Grandin (n.d. a) has also provided experttestimony about a PETA covert video of a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa thatdid not appear to be treating cattle appropriately. Grandin has become aworld expert on how to ensure that shehita, kosher ritual slaughter, and halalslaughter in the Islamic tradition, be conducted in a manner maximizing thewellbeing and minimizing the suffering of the animals, while observingreligious law (Grandin n.d. b).In both these documents, Grandin’s perceptions and insights are shaped

by her own sensory experiences as a high-functioning autistic, whomaintains that her own perceptual responses offer her an informedunderstanding of the stockyard animals she studies and writes about, as sherecounts in her book Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism toDecode Animal Behavior (Grandin and Anderson 2006). Grandin presents aparticular embodied epistemology colored by her empathic observations ofanimal behavior. For sympathetic readers, and many involved directly withanimal agriculture, Grandin’s perspective offers a step towards articulatingan “ethics of care” that puts the embodied specificities of animalsensation/behavior at the forefront, and details appropriate techniques thattake the (bovine, porcine, avian) physiological responses into account indefining what can be read as signs of pain or consciousness.For some vegan abolitionists, Grandin’s Proggy award was an outrageous

affront to their most cherished principals. In a paper entitled “Animals(Lost) in Translation,” Australian poet and autism advocate Dr Coral Hull(n.d.), writing on the website Abolitionist-Online, searingly indicts bothGrandin and Newkirk for the award, saying that “the Newkirk and Grandinteam appear to represent some utopian ideal of mass murder.” Hullcondemns both Grandin’s work with the meat industry, and the “welfarists”in the animal rights movement, saying, “The person who promotes the ideaof making murder ‘more humane’ is either psychopathic or very confused.”Meanwhile, in a commentary entitled, “Temple Grandin: Making MoneyKilling Animals,” Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (2009b) excoriates TempleGrandin for her work and her autism, saying, “Our understanding of autismis that it often prevents those who suffer from it from understandingemotions, their own and others.”On the other hand, many associated with the world of foie gras have taken

an active interest in Grandin’s work and find it heartening to have an ally inmaking the case that “humane meat production” is not an oxymoron. ArianeDaguin’s website has links to Grandin’s documents about humane slaughter,as well as the scientific correlation between stress and meat quality.Journalists Mark Caro and Sarah DiGregorio have both consulted withGrandin in their attempts to evaluate the quality of life for ducks on US foiegras farms. And, as Marcus Henley told us, when Hudson Valley Foie Grasbrought one of Grandin’s associates, Ericka Voogd, to the farm to assess and


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evaluate animal welfare conditions, she made some recommendations forimprovements, but reported no issues with the force-feeding itself.12

Although they have been targeted by Stop Gavage as tools of the foie grasindustry (Comiti 2006), the animal scientists in France who have done themost research on foie gras ducks and geese also see themselves as deeplycommitted to animal welfare. Deborah interviewed Gérard Guy in April2009 at the Experimental Station for Foie Gras Palmipedes in SouthwestFrance, where he is the Director. Incensed at the activists’ assertions that heworks at the bidding of the foie gras industry, he insists on his scientificindependence, and on his commitment to doing research aimed atimproving the welfare of both animals and those who work with them. Hewas one of forty French researchers featured in the 2007 Visages des sciencesseries [the faces of science], part of a Fête de la Science in SouthwestFrance. His photo is on a large bookmark produced for the event, along withhis words, “Je veille au bien-être de mes canards” [I am vigilant about thewellbeing of my ducks]. On the back, a statement about his research areasrefers to worker wellbeing too, in a description of new designs for pens thatboth permit the ducks to flap their wings, and reduce the stresses on thosewho feed them.Vinciane Despret is a Belgian philosopher of science who studies relations

between ethologists and the animals they study. Her article “The Body WeCare For: Anthropo-zoo-genesis” contains an account of a gosling thathatched in Konrad Lorenz’s lab, and imprinted on the scientist. Lorenz tookon the ongoing role of goose mother, with the gosling and her scientistlearning from one another:

The experimenter, far from keeping himself in the background,involves himself: he involves his body, he involves his knowledge, hisresponsibility and his future. The practice of knowing has become apractice of caring. And because he cares for his young goose, helearns what, in a world inhabited by humans and geese, may producerelations … Lorenz and his goose, in a relation of taming, in arelation that changes both identities, have domesticated oneanother. (Despret 2004: 20)

While attentive to the possibility that industrial production could push foiegras farms into the practices seen in other large-scale poultry operations,with both animal abuse and dehumanizing labor conditions, what we havewitnessed in California and New York, and on small farms in France, couldin some sense be called a “relation of taming” and a “practice of caring.” Theembodied epistemologies linking the gaveuse and her ducks or geese workwell through what Despret calls “attunement,” which articulates human andanimal ways of knowing and being. Returning for a moment to Lorenz andhis gosling, Despret tell us that:




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Lorenz is articulated by the setting he created. The setting isarticulating new ways of talking, new ways of being human with non-human, human with goose, goose with human. This experience bywhich Lorenz constructs a “being with” sheds light on one of theways bodies and worlds articulate each other: it is a particular modeof “disposing” both body and world. Lorenz produces a goose’s bodyto allow a goose’s world to affect him (and also to allow a human’sworld to affect a goose). He learns to be affected. (Despret 2004: 21)

Commenting on her exchanges with laboratory biologists who describe waysthat they aim to take responsibility for ensuring the wellbeing of their labanimals, Haraway writes:

Theirs is the biocosmopolitical practice of articulating bodies toother bodies with care so that significant others might flourish. Theirwork is immersed in the daily minutiae of life and death for theanimals … they care for and learn with and from. (Haraway 2007:92)

We hope to chart a middle ground where conversation might be had aboutthe necessity for an ethics of care vigilant about the wellbeing of animals,workers, and the quality of the food we eat, between the apparently genuine“being-with” of those who work closely with and learn from foie gras ducksand geese, and those who ardently represent the enterprise as among theworst exemplars of a murderous world of meat production.A fully informed consideration of foie gras production and consumption

can and should enter into broader discussions of industrial and neo-artisanalagrofood, along with the locally focused perspective of chefs like NaomiPomeroy, and the acknowledgement of activists like Ingrid Newkirk that thepractices of the slaughterhouse can be made more attentive to animalwellbeing. Surely there is room for the kind of dialogue that might lead to acare-based ethics that is attentively responsible for the wellbeing and sharedembodiment of human workers and nonhuman animals, and the minutiae oflife and death, in the hope of finding new ways of articulating bodies, worlds,and the foods that we choose.

Acknowledgments: :

The original version of this paper was prepared for the Society for the SocialStudies of Science working session, “Knowing Food: Taste, Technology, andSkill,” Montreal, October 12, 2007. Our thanks to the session’s organizers,Heather Paxson and David Sutton, and to the session’s other participants, fortheir insights and inspiration. We would like to thank Marcus Henley, who


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provided us with our introductory tour of Hudson Valley Foie Gras in upstateNew York. Deborah Heath would like to thank Guillermo and JunnyGonzalez for their time in both California and France, along with the Duboisfamily of Dordogne, France, and French avian researchers Gérard Guy andJacques Servière at INRA, and Jean Pierre Dubois, Martine Verdier, andFrançois Heraut in Dordogne, who provided generous, invaluable guidance.INRA researchers Daniel Guéméné and Gérard Guy provided helpfulcomments on this manuscript, some of which will be addressed in anupcoming publication. Student researchers at Lewis & Clark College EmilyNguyen, Hallie Detrick, and Hannah Ferreri all deserve hearty thanks aswell. A special note of appreciation to editors Ken Albala and Lisa Heldke,and our anonymous reviewers at Food, Culture and Society, as well as toSarita Gaytán, for their illuminating feedback an earlier version of themanuscript. To Donna Haraway, ongoing appreciation for her insights aboutnaturecultures and non-innocent relations among companion species.

Notes

: :1 Early on, Danie traveled to El Salvador, where Guillermo and his business partners, withencouragement from an Israeli company, envisioned launching a large-scale foie grasbusiness. Danie recommended a smaller-scale integrated operation like her own. With thatadvice in mind, the Gonzalezes left El Salvador and its civil war behind to test their luck innorthern California. Once again, Danie left Peyrenègre, traveling to California to lend ahand. Their son Gilles, who had worked as a chef, and then studied in Southwest Francefor a degree in foie gras production, also made a trip to California to help out. Later, theDubois’ nephew Eric Delmas arrived, staying for ten years as the manager of the Gonzalezduck farm near Stockton, California.

2 In September, 2008, a judge dismissed an HSUS lawsuit against the State of New York thatchallenged a grant to Hudson Valley to improve its waste treatment facilities (seehttp://www.worldpoultry.net/news/hsus-foie-gras-lawsuit-dismissed-id3034.html). SeeMark Caro’s account (2009: 106–8) of other HSUS lawsuits targeting Hudson Valley, andhis discussion with HSUS lawyer Paul Shapiro about whether the suits were part of astrategy to shut down the foie gras facility.

3 For the Jewish shtetl dwellers of central Europe, who historians tell us were primarilyresponsible for preserving foie gras techne and disseminating it to France, goose fat was anessential, religiously acceptable alternative to the prevalent pig fat or butter in a climatewhere the olive tree, providing the olive oil so prominent in Sephardic cooking, could notbe grown (Duhart 2009; Ginor et al. 1999). It also provided one of the few source of incomefor Eastern European Jewish women for several centuries (Ginor et al. 1999: 41).

4 “L’élevage en plein air est conduit dans le respect de l’environnement et du bien être desanimaux. Auprès des pruniers, les jeunes canards vivent au grand air, nourris d’un mélangede céréales préparé à la ferme. “Un bon gaveur aime les animaux !” Raymonde, gaveuse àSouleilles, est formelle, et elle n’y voit aucun paradoxe ; “un bon gaveur adapte ses gestessans brusquer l’animal, et établit une relation de confiance”. Cest d’ailleurs indispensablepour un résultat de qualité. C’est aussi la marque d’un gavage respectueux des méthodestraditionnelles.” Available from: http://www.souleilles-foiegras.com/ferme/index.htm.

5 Nevertheless, French avian scientist Gérard Guy, who researches relative stress among foiegras ducks and geese, argues that avian stress levels remain low in responsibly run large-scale foie gras operations. (interview with Deborah Heath, Artiguères, France, April 2,2009; see also Guémené et al. 2006b).




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6 Personal communication with Deborah Heath. See also Sonoma Foie Gras’ origin story ontheir website (http://www.savorcalifornia.com/template2.php?id=169&img=-1).

7 See Mark Caro’s account of the dubious grounds on which the Israeli Supreme Courtbanned foie gras production in that country (Caro 2009: 171–7).

8 For a strong statement of the anti-anti-foie gras critique that includes the case againstanthropomorphism, see San Francisco chef Mark Pastore’s widely distributed essay “Shockand Foie: The War against Dietary Self-Determinism” (Pastore, n.d.).

9 The press release announcing the new organization indicts the mainstream AmericanVeterinary Medical Association for sympathizing with industry, and for not supportingproposals like AVAR’s resolution asking the AVMA to condemn foie gras production (seehttp://www.itchmo.com/hsus-and-association-of-veterinarians-for-animal-rights-form-partnership-4579).

10 Interview with Anne Meneley, Toronto, September 16, 2007.

11 See color versions of this and other photos in the same series on photographer Alicia J.Stone’s Flickr site: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliciajrose/1444568863).

12 Telephone interview with Deborah Heath, January 9, 2009. Also reported in Caro (2009:291–5), who notes that Grandin demurred when invited to come with him to Hudson Valleyas a consultant.

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The Naturecultures of Foie Gras: Techniques of the Body and a Contested Ethics of Care

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