Panel Airs Proposed Foie Gras Ban

Animal welfare groups took aim yesterday at one of the staples of haute cuisine, the fatty livers of geese and ducks, known as foie gras, whose production entails force-feeding the birds through a pipe down their throats.

But what the enemies of foie gras called cruel, its purveyors called safe and humane as they fought a proposed ban on the sale of the traditional French delicacy in Maryland restaurants and specialty shops.

The Senate's education, health and environment committee, accustomed to debating global warming, septic systems and high-school dropout rates, heard two hours of testimony on the durability of goose gullets and whether a duck feels pain as its liver is fattened up.

Foie gras is not produced in Maryland, but many fine restaurants serve it. Their chefs told lawmakers that banning it would eat into their bottom lines and deprive diners of such dishes as Tournedos Rossini, the signature seared filet mignon topped with duck liver and truffle sauce at Aldo's Ristorante Italiano in Baltimore.

It looks as if foie gras connoisseurs can continue eating $36-a-pound pat¿, at least for now. The bill's sponsor, committee Chairman Joan Carter Conway (D-Baltimore), said it might be too far-reaching to pass the General Assembly this year and that the question of cruelty needed study.

Passions burned nevertheless. "This is an egregious practice," said Julie Janovsky of Farm Sanctuary, a national group urging state legislatures to get foie gras off the menu. After being force-fed grain, "these ducks can't walk," she said. "No other animal is made sicker before it is sent to slaughter."

Paul Shapiro of the Gaithersburg-based Humane Society of the United States said foie gras lovers are eating "diseased organs" whose method of production has "no place in a civilized society."

The animal rights groups said a ban would put Maryland in good company. The production and sale of foie gras will end in California in 2012 under a law passed in 2004. Chicago approved a ban in 2006. Pope Benedict XVI and Prince Charles have denigrated foie gras, and the celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck won't serve it. Whole Foods, the gourmet grocery chain, no longer carries it.

But representatives of Maryland's restaurant industry said the enemies of foie gras are wildly exaggerating.

"We are not in support of animal cruelty in any way," Melvin Thompson of the Maryland Restaurant Association said. "But we don't think there is any cruelty going on."

Thompson said a ban could send lawmakers down a slippery slope and end in their outlawing many foods produced by farming practices that animal rights groups oppose.

The owners of Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York, one of the country's three foie gras farms, testified that their Moulard ducks appear happy and unperturbed by being force-fed, because their gullets do not have gag reflexes.

The Maryland Agriculture Department opposes the bill because, as written, it would apply not only to foie gras but also to food products such as baby food, sausage and hot dogs that are made with other parts of the force-bed birds. Testing every sausage or can of baby food that comes into Maryland would be almost impossible, officials said. Animal rights group suggested amendments to limit the ban to goose and duck livers.