I want my foie gras!

Oct. 5, 2006 | It's been a bumpy year for America's chefs -- in April, Chicago barred foie gras from its restaurants; in September an E. coli outbreak prompted groceries to chuck every shred of spinach from their shelves; and just last week New York City's Board of Health proposed a sweeping ban on artificial trans fats that could affect every restaurant from Popeye's to Pearl Oyster Bar.

And lest foodies hope they might once again chew with impunity, now comes news that trouble is brewing in New Jersey. Michael Panter, a Democratic assemblyman in that state's 12th District, has picked up on Chicago's lead and announced his plan to introduce a bill banning the sale of foie gras in his state. Foie gras, a classically French delicacy of fatted duck liver, is created by using a tube to overfeed ducks -- a contentious practice known as "gavage" that has made producers the frequent target of animal rights activists. Since Friday, when Panter's intentions were reported by the Associated Press (and picked up by the International Herald Tribune), the food blogosphere has erupted into a buzz of debate and despair. While a ban on foie gras in New Jersey, of all places, might not seem the stuff of controversy, the Garden State happens to be home to D'Artagnan, the 30-year-old company that pioneered foie gras farming in the United States. With D'Artagnan its likely casualty, Panter's law could effectively cripple the production and consumption of foie gras not only in New York City's great temples of gastronomy, but in restaurants and homes around the country. Suddenly our ambivalence about duck livers has started looking like a story of national import.

Leading the alarm call about Panter's proposition have been Anthony Bourdain, the irascible chef and bestselling author who now hosts the popular Travel Channel show "No Reservations," and Michael Ruhlman, the author of "The Soul of a Chef," and co-author of "The French Laundry Cookbook" and "Charcuterie." Their approaches to food may be different -- Bourdain is a brash New Jersey native with a history of antagonizing picky eaters while Ruhlman has made his name as an earnest advocate for artisanal culinary craftspeople -- but both men agree that Panter's bill, and the California and Chicago legislation that preceded it, is not really about whether breeding ducks for foie gras is humane or inhumane. Instead, they argue, it is an emblem of the potential dangers of trying to legislate something as private and personal as eating habits -- and a sign of the difficulty Americans still have understanding where and how they get their food.

In the interest of taking this lively discussion to the people, over the weekend Salon asked Ruhlman and Bourdain to hash out their arguments. Here's what they had to say.

Michael Ruhlman: So what made you decide to wake up from your celebrity-chef slumber for this fight?

Anthony Bourdain: This is serious. This is my home state we're talking about and this issue affects my profession -- not to mention one of the most beloved people in the food world. This is like someone breaking into my apartment and stealing my television. It's personal.

I take it you're talking about your friend Ariane Daguin, owner and founder of D'Artagnan, the New Jersey company that produces and supplies foie gras and other duck and charcuterie products to cooks throughout the country?

Ariane is a seminal figure in America's food and restaurant revolution. She began D'Artagnan in 1985 when French chefs were wondering why they couldn't get the kind of food here that they had back home. And yes, her business mainly sold foie gras, which at the time was not available in the United States except in the form of imported canned purée.

I remember the way things were before her -- ducks were skinny, frozen, flavorless, gray. But thanks to D'Artagnan, along with foie gras, Americans got all kinds of things: the wonderful breast of the Moulard duck, called magret; the duck fat; bones and consequently sauce; confits; sausages; terrines. So Ariane is not just the foie gras lady -- she was a Gertrude Stein to a veritable salon of hotshot New York chefs who instinctively reached out to her if they needed something -- fresh truffles, or dried Tarbe beans for cassoulet -- she'd find a way to get it. She became a one-woman supply train for every French chef in New York and consequently any American chef with aspirations to be among the best. And she did all this at the exact moment when American chefs were ready to take off.

You've been known to be less than kind to vegetarians, not to mention the vegans, God help them. So is this just another of your bobble-head-doll rants?

I know I'm in peril of being thought of as some kind of culinary Ted Nugent. But for chrissake, I find hunting for sport appalling. You know how I feel about fur, about cosmetics testing on animals.

So how did I get here, defending the killing of God's creatures? As I see it, what's at stake is the individual's right to choose, the future of my profession, and good taste. Not to mention a delicious organ that dates back to the beginnings of gastronomy as we know it.

Actually, let's go back to the beginning for a moment -- not 5,000 years back to Egypt, where fattening duck liver for food may have begun -- but to the beginnings of the foie gras debate in the U.S.

I first became aware of it after the Laurent Manrique incident.

You're talking about the chef who's now at Aqua in San Francisco.

Laurent is a great chef, a really nice guy -- and a third- or fourth-generation Gascon at least -- who had the temerity to open a little gourmet shop in Sonoma County [Calif.] called Sonoma Saveur, where he sold, among other things, foie gras. Three years ago, people who call themselves animal rights activists threatened him over the phone, vandalized his car, broke into his business and destroyed it.

The most horrifying thing, though, was that they slipped into his backyard while he was at work and videotaped his wife and child cuddling inside their house and sent it to him. To me that's terrorism, it's racketeering, it's extortion. Central American death squads, Colombian drug lords -- they're the kinds of groups that engage in that activity. So that got my back up. But what was even more horrifying was that even after that incident, a law banning the production and sale of foie gras passed in California.

But that ban doesn't take effect until 2012; there's still time to change people's minds.

Ruhlman, that earnest Midwestern optimism of yours may work on the Cleveland chicks, but mark my words: If things keep going like they're going, pretty soon there will be no more foie gras in this country.

I refuse to become comfortably resigned. But anyway, what happened next?

After the Manrique episode a couple of high-profile chefs who, for what we'll assume were the best intentions, joined the chorus of foie gras critics.

Do you want to name names here? Because without Charlie's support...

I've been mean enough to Trotter already -- no need to flog a dead horse, fun as that might be. But a chef had been terrorized for selling good food and it was a time of need; so to my mind, for another chef at the very same moment to publicly announce they would no longer be using foie gras, that provided political cover for the forces that wanted it banned.

And that's where, for me, the issue broadens. Telling people what they should and shouldn't eat is cultural imperialism -- and deeply disturbing. That a group of people could say, "You know, how you eat and how you've been eating for hundreds, if not thousands, of years -- traditional Jewish cuisine, Western European food since Roman times -- that is wrong and should not be allowed." I find that offensive. Ethnically insensitive, jingoistic, xenophobic, anti-human and disrespectful of the diversity of cultures on this planet, and for human history. But that's just the kind of law that has passed -- in Chicago, our second city, no less. It's a win for the forces of darkness, willful ignorance and intolerance.

Next page: "Are we overreacting, just a little?"