Foie gras

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Slicing the foie gras
Salad preparation with foie gras
Dessert with foie gras and rhubarb

Foie gras ( [ˌfwaː ˈgʁaː] , French for 'fat liver'), in German foie gras , is a culinary specialty made from the liver of five to six month old geese or ducks .

history

Already around 2500 BC The fatty liver of birds in Egypt was valued as a delicacy. Around this time the practice of overfeeding (stuffing) geese and thereby producing fatty livers began. Pliny the Elder wrote about it, and through the Roman Empire the technique spread to what is now France , which is now considered the "homeland" of foie gras.

In 2005, foie gras was declared a national and gastronomic cultural heritage by the French National Assembly in an amendment to the Agriculture Act and is therefore exempt from French animal welfare laws.

distribution

Around 75 percent of world production (2008: 26,500 tons), 96 percent of which is duck liver (the rest of geese), and 98 percent of processing takes place in France. The branch of industry has around 30,000 employees. 70 percent are made in the west and south-west of France. After France, Hungary with 2,600 tons and Bulgaria with 2,000 tons are the most important producers. The main customer outside of France is Spain with 801 tonnes per year, with Germany in fifth place with 121 tonnes (2004).

Quality levels and variations

  • Foie gras entier : Made from one or two pieces of pure goose liver, can be cooked ( cuit ) or raw ( frais )
  • Foie gras : composed of several pieces of liver
  • Mousse de foie gras : Emulsion made from goose liver and other vegetable or animal fats
  • Pâté de foie gras ( foie gras pate ): contains at least 50% foie gras
  • Parfait de foie gras : contains at least 75% foie gras

Production and sales

A whole foie gras
Advertisement for foie gras in Strasbourg

The fatty livers are created by a certain fattening shape ( gavage ), the pasta or stuffing, in which the animals are force-fed for the last 21 to 28 days . Around three to four times a day, the animals are pumped into the stomachs of the animals using a pipe, for example 95 percent corn and 5 percent lard . As a result, the livers weigh 1000 to 2000 grams instead of the usual 300 grams at slaughter, and the fat content fluctuates between 31 and 51 percent. The fatty degeneration of the liver leads to a heavy build-up of triglycerides and , in return, the proportion of phospholipids decreases. The stuffing does not increase the cholesterol content .

Production is banned in many countries, but import and sale are permitted in the EU , for example . Until May 14, 2008, the sale of foie gras was banned in Chicago , which was unique in the world. In 2004 California banned the manufacture and sale of the liver of stuffed animals, as well as the trade in feathers and other products from stuffed geese and ducks. It came into force on July 1, 2012. A federal court in California overturned the sales ban in January 2015. In January 2019, the US Supreme Court finally upheld the sales ban.
In 2011, at the General Food and Beverage Exhibition (Anuga) in Cologne, the world's largest trade fair for the food and food industry, the product name foie gras was deleted from the trade fair's list of products, but this does not mean that it is not prohibited from exhibiting.
The City Council of New York decided in October 2019 to ban the sale from October 2,022th

literature

Web links

Commons : Foie gras  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Goose liver  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ French National Assembly declares foie gras a cultural asset ( memento of October 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) , netzeitung.de, October 18, 2005
  2. ↑ a b http://www.dgccrf.bercy.gouv.fr/documentation/hiver2009/foie_gras.htm
  3. ↑ usinenouvelle.com: Les trois mousquetaires du foie gras
  4. ↑ a b Leber und Leber Lassen , Spiegel Online, May 30, 2012
  5. ↑ Chicago lifts the world's only foie gras ban ( memento from July 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) , AFP, May 15, 2008, accessed on December 31, 2009
  6. ↑ U.S. Court Overturns Foie Gras Ban on Sales in California , Die Welt, January 8, 2015, accessed January 8, 2015
  7. ↑ zeit.de October 31, 2019: New York bans the sale of foie gras
  8. ↑ 'An assault on French gastronomic tradition': US Supreme court upholds foie gras ban
  9. ↑ Foie Gras: exhibitor yes, listing no ( memento of the original from October 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lebensmittelpraxis.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Food Practice, August 12, 2011
  10. ↑ n-tv NEWS: New York Bans Selling Foie Gras. Retrieved October 31, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Jeffery C. Mays, Amelia Kidneyberg: Foie Gras, Served in 1,000 Restaurants in New York City, Is Banned . In: The New York Times . October 30, 2019, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 31, 2019]).
  12. ↑ nytimes.com: Foie Gras, Served in 1,000 New York City Restaurants, Is Banned