Let Them Eat Foie

A Foie Gras Producer Reflects on an Embattled Decade

Guillermo Gonzalez
Guillermo Gonzalez Photo: Christopher Chung/Press-Dem

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat yesterday had a profile of Guillermo Gonzalez, founder of Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras, which is in the process of closing as the foie gras ban approaches. Gonzalez sounds bitter, still, over the harassment he faced from anti-foie activists who vandalized his offices and broke into the San Joaquin County farm where he raised his ducks back in 2003. Also, he feels like some of the activism had a racist tinge to it, with one bit of graffiti that said, “Go Home.” (Gonzalez immigrated with his wife from El Salvador in the eighties.) “We are an expression of what any immigrant to this country is expected to do,” Gonzalez says, and he says that he barely has any money saved for retirement from his 26-year-old business. He claims that he would still have his business if the state had not reneged on a promise to fund research that would have proven wrong the theories that gavage (the process by which the ducks’ livers are forcibly fattened) is not inhumane. [Press-Dem]

A Foie Gras Producer Reflects on an Embattled Decade