At Mélisse in Santa Monica, diners were preparing Saturday for "one last huzzah" in honour of a controversial delicacy that will soon become contraband across California.
Awaiting them at the upmarket French bistro is a feast of foie gras, a seven-course special celebrating the food stuff that makes animal rights campaigners gag, but leaves aficionados wanting more.
Those who make it through to the final dish – a strawberry shortcake stuffed with foie gras mouse and accompanied with foie gras ice cream – will be battling time, as well as their belts.
For at midnight California will enact a law it promised eight years ago, making the fattened livers of force-fed ducks and geese illegal.
Foie gras has long been a target for those calling for the ethical treatment of livestock. Translated to English as "fatty liver", foie gras is produced by a process known as gavage, in which the birds are force-fed corn through a tube.
It is designed to enlarge the birds' livers before being slaughtered, after which the organs are harvested and served up as a rich – and to fans a mouth-watering – delicacy.
The process dates back centuries. But in late 2004, then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill banning the sale of foie gras.
Diners and chefs were given a suitably long grace period to find an alternative method to gavage or wean themselves off the stuff it produces.
But despite a concerted effort by some to get the proposed ban overturned, seven and a half years down the line the law is now to be enacted.
From July 1, any restaurant serving foie gras will be fined up to $1,000 according to the statute. As the deadline has neared, restaurants have seen a growth in patrons wanting foie gras.
by Matt Williams, The Guardian | Read more:
Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
Awaiting them at the upmarket French bistro is a feast of foie gras, a seven-course special celebrating the food stuff that makes animal rights campaigners gag, but leaves aficionados wanting more.Those who make it through to the final dish – a strawberry shortcake stuffed with foie gras mouse and accompanied with foie gras ice cream – will be battling time, as well as their belts.
For at midnight California will enact a law it promised eight years ago, making the fattened livers of force-fed ducks and geese illegal.
Foie gras has long been a target for those calling for the ethical treatment of livestock. Translated to English as "fatty liver", foie gras is produced by a process known as gavage, in which the birds are force-fed corn through a tube.
It is designed to enlarge the birds' livers before being slaughtered, after which the organs are harvested and served up as a rich – and to fans a mouth-watering – delicacy.
The process dates back centuries. But in late 2004, then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill banning the sale of foie gras.
Diners and chefs were given a suitably long grace period to find an alternative method to gavage or wean themselves off the stuff it produces.
But despite a concerted effort by some to get the proposed ban overturned, seven and a half years down the line the law is now to be enacted.
From July 1, any restaurant serving foie gras will be fined up to $1,000 according to the statute. As the deadline has neared, restaurants have seen a growth in patrons wanting foie gras.
by Matt Williams, The Guardian | Read more:
Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
