Foie Gras

La Pateria de Sousa Foie Gras

Ethical foie gras - foie gras produced without force-feeding. It is natural for geese to binge eat in winter in preparation for migration. The de Sousa family simply allow this to happen. The local grey geese live free range on the de Sousa farm in Extremadura in Southern Spain, in symbiotic harmony with the family’s colony of pigs. They eat leftover acorns plus figs and dried lupins that are left lying on the ground for them. This is how de Sousa’s geese have always been tended.

Production is small and organic. Just 1,000 geese are raised per year, dependent on the whims of nature and the climate. And the foie gras is produced only once a year, in December or February (depending in the weather), because this is when nature causes the geese to be at their fattest.

This is a ‘renegade’ product. La Pateria de Sousa has never used gavage, or force feeding. And it is a Spanish, not French product. In 2006, when Eduardo de Sousa entered his foie gras into the highly prestigious Salon Internationale de L’alimentation (Paris International Food Fair or SIAL) it won the Coup de Grace (first prize). This caused a sensation. A Spanish company had triumphed at creating a food decreed by law to be part of France’s gastronomic and cultural heritage, using an untraditional, ‘un-French’ method.

This top tier, award winning, ethically produced, artisanal food respects and utilises the environment’s resources. That it is being feted by chefs and food lovers is deserved.