The Ethics of Eating Foie Gras: Should We Indulge?

Foie gras, celebrated as one of the finest delicacies, boasts a history that stretches back thousands of years. In today’s culinary landscape, it holds a prestigious place in French cuisine, yet ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depict the fattening of geese going back millennia. Why the fattening? Because geese, by nature, do not eat excessively and are relatively active. To ensure they gain weight, particularly to enrich their livers with fat, they must be force-fed. Essentially, large quantities of food are pushed into their crop, and they are compelled to swallow. The Romans, for example, would fatten geese with figs to produce sweet, sugar-rich livers.

When a goose is force-fed, its liver can expand to ten times its normal size, which significantly affects the bird's regular functions. It must be acknowledged that this method is quite cruel; indeed, many today oppose both the practice of force-feeding and the consumption of foie gras, as well as any food obtained through such means.

Aside from animal welfare concerns, there exists another halachic issue that rabbinic authorities have wrestled with for generations. When food is forcefully shoved into a goose’s esophagus, it could potentially sustain injuries, leading to a classification of the bird as *treifah*. Rabbi Moshe Isserlish (the Rema) noted that in Krakow, the custom was to eat geese fattened by force-feeding, without any concern for these injuries. In contrast, the Beit Chadash (Bach) insisted that such consumption should be prohibited. Some scholars raised the question of whether the force-feeding leads to the bird’s degeneration; thus, it could potentially classify it as *treifah*, though this reasoning was ultimately dismissed by other authorities.

In the early years of the state of Israel, a group of Hungarian immigrants established a fattening enterprise, prompting the question to be posed to prominent rabbis of the Land of Israel, including Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank and the Chazon Ish. Both advised against the practice from an animal welfare perspective but suggested a modified approach, recommending a mixture of soft food for feeding to mitigate concerns about *treifah* and damage from hard grains.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel does not grant a *hechsher* (kosher certification) for force-fed geese due to concerns over animal suffering, which is also considered a deficiency in kosher standards, as per Rabbi Amar's ruling.