All about our foies gras
Effectively, wild goose seems to have been "programmed" to stuff itself before its anual long migration. Indeed, it is not the only animal to stock fat as energy before periodes of intense efforts or long fasting but it has, and ducks too, the capacity to stock spontaneously a large part of this fat in its liver. You have to know that foies gras are not sick livers : they have no cancer or cirrhosis. As soon as stuffing is stopped, liver comes back to its normal size, as in nature when goose or duck ends its migration.
We can easily imagine that those naturally fat animals were already noticed and appreciated by prehistoric hunters and that, when agriculture and livestock farming developed, it came to people to capture and stuff geese.
Egyptians were the first to stuff geese. They have noticed that, during Spring, before their migration, wild geese grown fat. And since the 3rd millenium before JC, Egyptians used to capture geese before they left and to keep overfeeding them by putting into their beack small sausages or small pellets of cereal paste, while massaging their neck to make the ingestion easier. Egyptians could then enjoy well fat geese. But Romans were the first to stuff geese only for their livers, with dried figs. And Greeks were probably the first to stuff ducks.
Thanks to Gaul conquest by Romans, stuffing techniques arrived in France and particularly in Aquitaine were people kept using them after Romans left, instead of others regions.
Later, Christophe Colomb, because he brought back corn, gave an unexpected extent to duck livestock farming in the South-West where this cereal well became acclimatized. And it is still true nowadays when South-West foie gras is a must-have.
It is even certified by a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). This protection guaranties that these foies gras come from ducks of Barbarie, best species for stuffing, that these ducks were borned, raised, stuffed, slaughtered and carved in the South-West. It guaranties also that these ducks were fed with cereals and stuffed with South-West corn. These ducks were also raised outdoor, with a limited number of ducks by farm. La Belle Chaurienne offers you foies gras certified by this PGI.
