A Luxury Dish Is Banned, and a Rural County Reels
The ban protects animals and slaps wealthy gourmands. But upstate, hundreds of low-wage immigrant laborers are bracing for the impact.
The foie gras truffle torchon at the Beatrice Inn in Greenwich Village is a decadent indulgence: four discs of silky duck-liver mousse paired with triangles of buttery toast, all arranged on a silver platter. The appetizer goes for $28 — a gateway, perhaps, to the menu’s $375 Porterhouse steak. The restaurant serves about 200 pounds of foie gras a week.
“There’s nothing like it,” said Angie Mar, the restaurant’s chef and owner.
Last October, when the New York City Council passed a ban on foie gras as inhumane, Mayor Bill de Blasio called foie gras “a luxury item that the vast majority of us would never be able to afford.”
“This,” he added, “is not where we should be shedding a tear.”
But two hours northwest of the city, in one of New York’s poorest counties, foie gras plays a much different role. There it is not a luxury splurge but a domino in a fragile local economy. Almost all of the foie gras produced in the United States comes from two duck farms in Sullivan County, where about 400 workers, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, rely on it for their livelihood.
Locals say that New York City’s ban, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2022, threatens all the businesses connected with the two farms, from the neighboring farms that supply feed for the ducks to the machine shops that repair agricultural equipment, from the small truckers to the local markets and restaurants that cater to the Spanish-speaking workers.
And in a county hit hard by the opioid crisis, one of the few residential drug treatment programs operates in a building owned by one of the duck farms, with support from the farm; the other farm hosts a free health clinic.
The ban singles out a community that is already struggling, said Jen Metzger, a state senator and chairwoman of the committee on agriculture, who said she invited City Council members to visit the farms before voting on the ban, but got no takers.
“These farms are connected to the feed mill, the towing and tractor companies, the local banks,” Ms. Metzger said. “They add $300,000 into the local school system in property taxes. As legislators, we have to think of all the consequences of the actions we take.”
On a chilly December morning, Tom Bose, 61, who owns a small dairy farm, took a break from loading manure for his fields to outline what foie gras has meant to him and his neighbors. Mr. Bose, who also serves as the town supervisor in Callicoon, N.Y., said he could remember when Sullivan County supported more than 200 dairy farms; now it is down below 20, he said.
“Struggling is an understatement,” he added.
The manure he was loading came from the duck farms, delivered for free as part of an agreement with the state. Without it, Mr. Bose said, a farm like his would have to buy $7,500 to $10,000 of chemical fertilizer every year.
“Most farmers here can’t afford that,” he said.
Be First to Comment