Foie Gras battle continues

Serving compassionate carnivores

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — “If a politician is looking to make a name for himself, they come after us. If a chef is looking to make a name for himself, they come after our product.” That was Rick Bishop’s way of summing up the two extreme views of the duck liver produced by Hudson Valley Foie Gras (HVFG).

Bishop, who is the national sales and marketing director for HVFG, put in an appearance at the government center on December 3, a day before lawyers and engineers from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) were scheduled to take a tour of the two HVFG farms in Ferndale and Bethel as part of the discovery process in a lawsuit. Bishop warned lawmakers that they were likely to hear negative stories in the aftermath of the visit, but he wanted to assure Sullivan County lawmakers that the company is behaving responsibly.

Bishop said that when he was learning about farming in the ’80s, the emphasis was on efficiency; the thinking was that if a farming operation was not constantly growing, becoming faster and utilizing a smaller space, the competition would put it out of business.

That, however, is changing. He said that over the past five or six years, the majority of Americans had become what he termed “compassionate carnivores,” which is to say that most are not willing to give up eating meat, but they like to know that the animals that provide it were not abused while they were alive.

Bishop said that HVFG had taken that concept to heart, examined every stage of the lives of the ducks at the farm and made changes to ensure that they are not unduly stressed. Bishop was particularly pleased that the farm operation can claim to be “cage free.” The ducks are housed in 24-square-foot pens as they are undergoing the intense feeding process, as opposed to tiny individual cages, which are used by foie gras producers in Canada.

The fight to ban foie gras in locations across the country seems to be running out of steam. The 2005 ban in Chicago was repealed in 2008. Ten states, including New York and New Jersey, have considered bans on the delicacy and rejected them. Only the ban in California, which is scheduled to take effect in 2012, remains in place in the United States.

This trend, however, has not ended the campaign by the HSUS to halt the production of foie gras. Because aggressive feeding of the ducks through tubes leads to enlarged livers, the HSUS sued in New York State to have the product labeled an adulterated food product, which would prevent it from being sold. That suit was thrown out, but HSUS has been pursuing a separate case against HVFG since 2006.

Recently, HVFG became the target of a different kind of attack. It was singled out not because of the welfare of the ducks, but because of concern for the way it was allegedly treating some of its workers.

In August, Senator Pedro Espada paid a surprise visit to the farm on a Friday night with reporters from two New York newspapers in tow. Espada, who had recently become majority leader of the New York State Senate, after twice switching political allegiance from one party to the other, was involved in an effort to pass the Farm Workers Fair Labor Practices Act, which would have guaranteed all farm workers in the state to overtime wages, the right to unionize and to collect disability and unemployment insurance.

The incident brought Espada some much-needed positive publicity in New York City, where several newspaper editorial writers, who had earlier lambasted him for bringing the business of the senate to a halt, praised him for being on the right side of the farm workers issue.

The bill was fiercely opposed by farmers and farming organizations across the states, who said it would force them to cut jobs and force some of them to close. The bill was blocked from coming to a vote in the senate in November.

The allegations about the mistreatment of employees at HVFG were never substantiated.

It is not clear where the HSUS case against HVFG is now going. Bishop said that about five lawyers and engineers toured the two farms over the space of about four hours on December 4, which was a brief period of time compared to the 48 hours the judge granted for the discovery. Bishop said the process went smoothly and there were no surprises. A spokesman for HSUS said they could not comment on the case.