HVFG products: duck gizzards, breasts, livers, and fat (in white tub)

For Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the future has never looked brighter. As the world's largest producer of fine-quality foie gras, the Sullivan County company has seen its sales explode in the last 10 years. Thirty-three of Zagat's 50 top-rated restaurants in New York City have Hudson Valley Foie Gras (HVFG) on their menus. And while per capita consumption is still low in the United States, a product formerly reserved for the super-rich is on the cusp of becoming the balsamic vinegar of the next decade.

But there is a storm brewing in Sullivan County. Animal rights activists have dubbed foie gras "fur food." At their urging, California has recently joined Germany, Poland, Finland, Sweden, the UK, and Israel in banning foie gras production, by 2012. The ban will effectively put Sonoma Foie Gras, HVFG's only US competition, out of business.

Now the animal defenders are setting their sights on the Hudson Valley and vowing to do whatever it takes to put Hudson Valley Foie Gras out of business.

Larousse Gastronomique, the encyclopedia of the culinary world, defines foie gras as goose or duck liver that is grossly enlarged by methodically fattening the bird. Technically, the liver is so fatty that some avian veterinarians call it diseased, and therein lies the problem. Waterfowl aren't inclined to eat themselves into liver failure without assistance.

Izzy Yanay, co-owner of HVFG, at the Sullivan County farm

According to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, "assistance" originally came from slaves who dropped pieces of grain down the goose's throat while gently stroking the bird's neck.

The French took the process one step further, speeding up production with the first real foie gras innovation—the funnel. Nineteenth-century photographs show French farm wives carefully pouring grain down the gullet of one goose while the rest of the flock anxiously wait their turns to be fed, like so many frat boys waiting a turn at the beer bong.

Unfortunately, this method doesn't lend itself to mass production. As demand for the delicacy increased, modern foie gras producers replaced the funnel in favor of a pneumatic pump that can force a pound of feed down a bird's throat in seconds. The French call the procedure gavage, which translates roughly as "force-feeding a goose by shoving a tube down its esophagus."

Pate made from HVFG as prepared by Jon Novi of the Depuy Canal House

Foie gras enthusiasts insist that the gavage process replicates the birds' natural pre-migratory bingeing. But wild ducks only gorge themselves until their liver doubles in size. Gavage produces livers six to ten times their normal size. And modern producers cut down on losses by replacing delicate, disease-prone geese with hardy, disease-resistant hybrid ducks known as the mulard, or mule ducks.

The Hudson Valley food community is split on the subject of "foie." John Novi, chef owner of the venerable Depuy Canal House in High Falls, considers it a question of balance. "I have many vegetarian items on my menu, as well as a lot of fish and seafood. But I also serve foie gras. It is a delicacy that people love."

But for Jessica Applestone, co-owner with her husband, Josh, of Fleisher's Grass-Fed & Organic Meats in Kingston, demand for foie doesn't justify its sale. "I don't want to make a profit off the suffering of animals. Customers ask us for foie gras all the time. We could sell lots of it. But we choose not to." Applestone said people who ask for the stuff are treated to her lecture about the horrors of its production. Some claim they didn't know how it was made.

Animal-rights activist Sarahjane Blum holding a duck she rescued from HVFG

According to Sarahjane Blum, founder of the anti–foie gras group Gourmet Cruelty, lack of information is what drives the industry. "People either refuse to acknowledge how foie gras is made or they don't know. This industry survives on people's willful ignorance," she said.

Blum is not the archetypal animal rights activist. The 26-year-old PhD candidate is a life-long vegan, but somehow avoids the off-putting, self-righteous attitude of most PETA-types. She claims she isn't trying to tell people what to eat; she just wants to show them how it ended up on their plate.

Blum said that she requested tours of both US foie gras farms. But when her calls went unreturned, she led a group of activists on several late-night, self-guided tours of both establishments—with a video camera. The result is Delicacy of Despair, a 16-minute documentary that promises a view "behind the closed doors of the foie gras industry."

The film paints a grim picture. The activists found ducks kept in isolation cages, ducks with malformed beaks and crippled feet. Some of the ducks were so fat their legs could no longer support them. Farm employees went about their business— roughly grabbing ducks by the neck and jamming in feeding tubes. Trashcans overflowed with duck corpses. There's even a shot of two ducks being eaten alive by rats. The film is horrifying, and incredibly effective. But my many years in television news has taught me that selective editing can make a bad situation look a thousand times worse. To find out what was really going on at a foie gras farm, I would have to visit one.

Hudson Valley Foie Gras is at the end of a dead-end road in rural Sullivan County. Only a few faded No Trespassing signs and a gate (left open when I visited) keep outsiders out of the facility, though I was told a security guard usually watches it.

Owners Izzy Yanay and Michael Ginor were weary when I requested an interview and tour. They were tired of all the bad publicity and felt unfairly singled-out among livestock producers. "It's easy to say foie gras is bad because it is a luxury product," said Yanay.

In the end they decided they had nothing to hide. "When you want to make good liver you have to treat the ducks well," Yanay said. "I need every duck to have a smile on its face."

Penned ducks await feeding at Hudson Valley Foie Gras

Yanay has been in the foie gras business for more that 20 years.  Michael Ginor is the author of Foie Gras: A Passion, the definitive English language reference book on the subject.

HVFG handles every aspect of foie gras production in-house. Eggs produced through artificial insemination are hatched to order according to the culinary season. The ducklings are kept in groups of 1,000 until they are 11 to 14 weeks old and are then transferred to smaller pens for force-feeding.

Each of the farm's 90 handlers is responsible for feeding 350 ducks three times a day. Spending one minute on each bird would make for a 17-and-a-half-hour workday, but most handlers work much faster. Activists claim that over-worked employees don't have time to be careful with the ducks and sometimes kill them by overfeeding. Yanay denies the charge, pointing out that worker's monthly bonuses are docked for each dead bird.

Whether by coincidence or design, none of the ducks were being fed during the three hours I spent at HVFG. And the isolation cages depicted in Blum's film were empty. "That was an experiment. It didn't work," Yanay said, explaining that the mortality rate had been too high to be profitable.

Blum had told me to be on the lookout for ducks so fat they were unable to walk. All of the ducks I saw walked. They were very fat and very dirty, a fact both Yanay and Blum said was due to a lack of sufficient water for preening. Several of the fattest ducks had green chalk marks on their necks designating them for the next day's slaughter.

Hudson Valley Foie Gras’s processing facility

There are about 50,000 ducks in the pipeline at any given time at HVFG, which accounts for the eye-watering stench that pervades the farm. Most of the duck pens have plastic or metal grate floors, allowing feces to fall into pits below. Blum said she often saw drowned ducks in the waste. "Manure," Yanay said, looking off into the distance, "is our biggest problem." He repeated this phrase every time I asked him what they did with all the waste.

Blum accused Yanay of sanitizing the farm for my visit and said he was lying about the isolation cages. "I've heard that he tells people that and I don't believe it."

The end of my tour was the end of the line for the ducks. Two thousand ducks are dispatched every week in the facility's on-site slaughterhouse, except during the Christmas holidays when production jumps to 10,000 per week. Each duck is shocked unconscious before having its throat slit. The liver is then removed and the carcass is broken down into its component parts.

In addition to farm-fresh foie gras, HVFG does a brisk business in foie gras by-products like duck breasts, legs, wings, and fat. The feathers are sold as duvet stuffing. Only the feet are discarded, in accordance with New York State law.

Force-feeding fowl began in ancient Egypt

Although Yanay would like to keep his business in the Hudson Valley, he is a pragmatist. "If production is banned in New York, we will take our business to China. We will kill the same number of ducks. No ducks have ever been spared by banning foie gras."

Sitting in his office, surrounded by dozens of whimsical and decorative ducks, Yanay couldn't understand how anyone who eats meat could object to foie gras.

"Okay. We are bad people. But what we do wrong is we kill them," Yanay said. "We are a farm that produces a product. You see the cute little babies coming out of the eggs. We grow them and feed them and then we have to kill them."