The three major cuisines in the world are caviar, truffle and foie gras, and the French have a soft spot for foie gras.
The French obsession with foie gras has reached a crazy level, eating 75% of the world's top foie gras products, and duck and goose farmers in many countries have specifically adjusted the direction to supply foie gras to French foodies, including the United States and Canada. According to statistics, at least 24 million ducks and more than 1 million geese "sacrifice" for the production of foie gras every year, and ducks have been wronged for many years: now the world knows that duck liver "pretends" to be foie gras, but no one is facing it.
Eating foie gras has a long history, eventually dating back to the Romans more than two thousand years ago. At first, foie gras was only the food of the lower classes of Rome, after all, goose meat was more pure. But as the level of cooking and preparation increased, foie gras was far more attractive to the Roman people than goose meat. Later, foie gras was also offered to Julius Caesar as a top ingredient, and was praised by Caesar for its "delicious product". Upward and downward, a boom in foie gras soon swept through Rome, incidentally to Alsace and the countryside of southwestern France.
After the foie gras spread to France, gourmets made drastic localization improvements to it, using foie gras as the main ingredient to creatively produce meat jelly and meat sauce, and adding French bread in the process of eating, which is simple and practical, and has a unique flavor in it. In the time of Louis XVI in France, the foie gras products that had been improved several times were presented as a tribute to Louis XVI. Unbeknownst to him, Louis XVI regarded foie gras as a delicious delicacy, and since then eating foie gras has become one of his new hobbies.
Foie gras has since gained fame and received unanimous praise from artists of the time, establishing the status of foie gras as a culinary treasure. Today, the French people still maintain the tradition of eating foie gras, and foie gras has become an indispensable dish for high-end wine banquets.
French foie gras is much larger than regular foie gras, and a standard French foie gras weighs 600-900 grams and can reach a maximum of 2 kg. This is not difficult to understand, if it is as small as ordinary foie gras, it is really not eaten, so the Transformation of Foie Gras and Goose in France has become inevitable. The opening paragraph mentions that the United States, Canada, and France are not the main forces in the production of foie gras, but Hungary. Hungary, which has a long history and rich experience in raising geese, has become the world's largest foie gras producer, after all, the factory price of foie gras is as high as 30 euros per kilogram, and it is normal for the Hungarian people to flock to it.
The foie gras production process is not at all described as cruel. Farmers first buy a batch of young geese from the goose farm, and then test the physical fitness of these young geese to eliminate a group of insufficient physical fitness and weak bodies. Then the remaining young geese are stuffed into the iron cage, and the neck is extended to the outside of the iron fence, and from the side, a row of brushed geese necks is seen. The goose necks are fixed to a brace that trains the neck muscles and can barely move for half a minute, thus avoiding the struggle of forcing the young geese to feed, which is 12 weeks.
During the period, the farmers increased the amount of food for the young geese every day, and tried all kinds of ways to make them eat, and the result was that the young geese grew fat and healthy, and the stomach was propped up like a bulging noodle bag. The neck of the young goose was eventually destroyed into a "steel pipe", and some of the young geese could not withstand the torture and lost their activity early and were eliminated.
The remaining geese enter the fattening period, focusing on fattening the foie gras to make it very fat. The most common method for farmers is both simple and straightforward: prepare an iron pipe that can reach the depths of the goose's throat by about 30 centimeters, clear the internal burrs, and reduce the resistance to food circulation. Three times a day in the morning, during and at night, a total of 12 kilograms of food is hard stuffed into the stomach of the goose through an iron pipe, and these foods are carefully selected and greatly helpful for the fattening of foie gras, including corn and some special feed.
Experience tells farmers that their feed should be reduced in calcium so that foie gras becomes fatty and tender. However, the goose can not get enough calcium is prone to "hypochondriasis", limbs, legs, wings and bones often have atrophy, weakness and other conditions, the goose has to squat in the cage every day. After 18 days of feeding, these foie gras were successfully fed, and the volume of foie gras was 6-10 times larger than that of normal foie gras.
There is a set of standards for the evaluation of foie gras, generally obese, clean feathers, rarely damaged goose, it is dehaired to cook, modulated is the real sense of the top foie gras. According to the explanation of French gourmets, this is the perfect combination of shape and taste, which is undeniable that this is the same as the color and taste of China's cuisine.
In the process of producing foie gras, the destruction of the goose is not just as simple as sticking a steel pipe into the throat to stuff it. Farmers put the geese into a cage that is so narrow that it is difficult to turn around, and the natural loss of energy without movement of the geese is less, and most of the geese appear to be sluggish. Many farmers have raised tens of thousands of geese, feeding the geese in seconds, according to the minutes, at first they are still careful, and then they simply ignore it, and every day the mouth, throat, legs and feet of the geese are scratched.
When the whole goose was fed in the morning, it was time for lunch again, so in order to improve efficiency, the geese were simply not allowed to sleep. The daily feeding volume of geese far exceeds the range of gastrointestinal carrying, often suffering from various diseases; the esophagus undergoes iron pipe friction and pokes the top 3 times a day, and some have already festered, although the goose has been sharpened in the juvenile stage, but the effect is limited;
Some of the geese drank water mixed with blood from the festering place, and the scene was a mess, and people were stunned to see it. Some geese often have constipation due to eating too much, drinking too little water, and in severe cases, they become blood in the stool, which is why some geese always have blood on their buttocks.
Although the goose was devastated, Hungary made a lot of money, exporting 1500 tons of foie gras every year. However, in recent years, environmentalists and animal protectors have been increasing their criticism of Hungary year by year, and Hungary is feeling pressure. At the same time, many countries and regions in the world have begun to ban the production of foie gras, such as New York, which prohibits the sale and consumption of foie gras from 2022, and violators will be fined up to $2,000. At that time, whether the price of foie gras will rise or fall, it is really difficult to say!
Original: Old High