Is the foie gras controversy faux? I visited Hudson Valley Foie Gras

You don’t have to be a VIP to visit Hudson Valley Foie Gras. Just call them — they’ll even give you directions. The neat part of Hudson Valley Foie Gras is that anybody (well, except for a couple of people they had legal wranglings with) can come visit the farm and its doings for free. Yes, this is the same foie gras farm – pretty much the last one standing in the U.S. – at the center of attention in Mark Caro’s book, The Foie Gras Wars. Whether you’re a foodie, a farmer or an animal rights’ activist, you’ll learn a lot and clear up many misconceptions by visiting Hudson Valley Foie Gras. You may have seen the episode of No Reservationswith Anthony Bourdain doing the same.

Foie gras is the French term for “fat liver,” which ducks and geese get when they overeat. Farmers make the ducks overeat to create a better product, similar to Perdue creating bigger chicken breasts. Foie gras is a gourmet delicacy and has been since Egyptian times. There is evidence that Diaspora Jews brought the science of foie gras production to the corners of Europe. You’ll find foie gras served at some of the finest restaurants in the world, aside from in California — where its sale has been outlawed since July.

You can be taken to any of the barns and meat production buildings at the farm. It’s a misconception some of the activists discussed in Foie Gras Wars tried to stick in the public consciousness: that somehow there’s a shell game of what’s “really going on” and the “real thing” is kept from public view. It’s simply not true.

I saw it for myself. For 12 weeks, the ducks (and it’s always ducks here – geese make an unpredictable, albeit traditional food product) wander around on their own in a barn. They just lead an indoor duck life, eating when they want, drinking when they want. They don’t look stressed out and they aren’t quacking aggressively.

The life of a foie gras duck is much longer than the life of one raised solely for meat. The meat ones tend to top off at about 6 weeks. After the ducks are butchered, everything is used: the liver, the meat, feathers, bone meal.

For the last two weeks of their lives, the ducks go into pens of about 10. They aren’t in individual cages, though Canadians still adhere to this practice. The ducks have one particular feeder for the rest of their lives and the process takes just a few seconds. I saw a bunch being fed, and it was much less arduous than when I had a feeding tube inserted in the hospital.

To understand that the production of foie gras is not cruel, you have to at least concede the concept of animals as an agricultural product. Even if you don’t – perhaps you’re a vegan who doesn’t want to ever see a caged animal on a farm or a zoo – you have to admit that animals’ lives in the wild are very stressful. Who hasn’t seen Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, where an animal is snatched up by a predator in the blink of an eye? Sweetness and how-de-do’s are just not part of nature.

As for the feeders themselves, like in all agricultural communities, they are mostly Latino. Hudson Valley Foie Gras makes sure they have living arrangements, pays bonuses and even has a chapel on site. Interestingly enough, manager Marcus Henley is now a vegetarian, in an effort to lose weight. He does still sample the finished foie gras.