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France defends its taste for foie gras

Нецелевое использование средств федерального бюджета – направление и использование средств федерального бюджета на цели, не соответствующие условиям получения указанных средств, определенным утвержденным федеральным бюджетом на соответствующий финансовый год, бюджетной росписью федерального бюджета, уведомлением о бюджетных ассигнованиях, сметой доходов и расходов либо иным правовым основанием их получения.

Нецелевое использование средств федерального бюджета выражается в виде:

а) использования средств федерального бюджета на цели, не предусмотренные бюджетной росписью федерального бюджета и лимитами бюджетных обязательств на соответствующий финансовый год;

б) использования средств федерального бюджета на цели, не предусмотренные в утвержденных сметах доходов и расходов на соответствующий финансовый год;

в) использования средств федерального бюджета на цели, не предусмотренные договором (соглашением) на получение бюджетных кредитов или бюджетных ссуд;

г) использования средств федерального бюджета, полученных в виде субсидий или субвенций на цели, не предусмотренные условиями их предоставления;

д) иных видов нецелевого использования средств федерального бюджета, установленных бюджетным законодательством.

Расчет производится по следующей формуле:

где

Ш – штраф, в рублях;

Р – доля ставки рефинансирования, установленная федеральным законом о федеральном бюджете на соответствующий финансовый год, и используемая для расчета штрафа;

С – ставка рефинансирования (учетная ставка) Банка России, действующая в период использования средств федерального бюджета не по целевому назначению, %.

Периодом нецелевого использования средств федерального бюджета признается срок с даты отвлечения средств на цели, не предусмотренные по условиям предоставления средств федерального бюджета, до даты их возврата в федеральный бюджет или направления использования по целевому назначению;

Н – сумма нецелевого использования средств федерального бюджета.

France defends its taste for foie gras

Farmers fear the knock-on effects of California's ban on their famed delicacy, reports Kim Willsher

loie gras producer Yves Boissiere I promises visitors to his farm a com­prehensive A-to-Z tour of France's controversial delicacy. The starting point, or A, is the heated "nursery" containing 800 two-day-old yellow-down male ducklings taking their first oblivious steps on the path to a dinner plate. The day ends with Z, a dinner of foie gras and duck breasts at the farm's nearby restaurant.

In between, there is a guided tour of the farm, a stop at Boissiere's "foie gras museum" - the only one in France - a degustation of foie gras and a cookery lesson.

However, an important part of the process begin­ning with G is missing; the gavage, or force-feeding of ducks. This is what outrages animal rights activists and has prompted a ban on the sale or production of foie gras in California. Frangois Ilollande, France's president, has pledged to contest the California ban. which came into effect on 1 July, and which the French junior agriculture minister, Guillaume Garot, blamed on "powerful lobbies in the Anglo-Saxon world". But it is not a drop in sales that is worry­ing the foie gras industry - very little finds its way across the Atlantic - it is the fear that the ban might be contagious, so wrecking an important part of the country's gastronomic heritage.

Boissiere is happy to talk in detail about the gav­age. He describes how two workers, Nicolas and Raymonde, pump the feed into each duck's stom­ach to make its liver fatty - the meaning of foie gras - causing the organ to swell to about 500g, 10 times its normal weight. He gives facts and figures: the ducklings spend two weeks "acclimatising" in the nursery, 12 weeks outside, then 13 days of intensive feeding starting with 200g of corn mix a day, which is gradually increased to a kilogram a day. He illustrates

. this with diagrams of the duck digestive systems and tubes of different feed; he even plays a short video of the gavage.

The force-feeding itself, how­ever, is not part of the tour. Had visitors peered through the win­dows of a hangar-like building, they might have seen Raymonde sitting on a stool pushing a feeding tube down the necks of birds while stroking their chests. There was no drama. There was no obvious sign of cruelty. There was, in truth, very little to see, which made Boissiere's omis­sion curious.

Or perhaps not. During a re­cent visit to a foie gras co-operative in the neighbouring region of Gers, Garot also missed the gavage. Agence France-Presse, the news organisation, said that the producers had explained that it was a sensitive moment, even

"if the animals don't suffer". Clearly, France's foie gras producers are on the defensive.

An 89-page scientific study, adopted in 1998 by the European commission, found that death rates among force-fed birds were up to 20 times higher than those reared normally. The report described foie gras as the "pathological liver of a bird suffer­ing from hepatic steatosis" - a buildup of fat cells that, in humans, would usually be caused by alcohol abuse or obesity. As a result, force-feeding is banned in Britain, Germany, Finland, Italy, Sweden, South Africa and Israel. The producers have their own stud­ies and hold a trump card: article L654 of France's 2006 Rural Code decrees: "Foie gras is part of the protected cultural and gastronomic heritage of France. By 'foie gras' is meant the liver of a duck or a goose specifically fattened by force-feeding."

The foie gras controversy is polarised, but rela­tively simple. Supporters argue that, in nature, mi­grating ducks stuff themselves with food for their long journey and the gavage is an extension of this natural process; the ducks do not suffer, are not sick or diseased as a result, and the liver will revert to normal if force-feeding is stopped. Opponents say that there is nothing natural about force-feeding specially bred ducks that do not migrate, and go on to argue that, while inserting a tube into a bird's throat may or may not cause pain, it is cruel because it deliberately provokes irreversible liver damage.

Both sides point to "scientific evidence" for their claims. From there on, the debate becomes less tech­nical and more emotive. Foie gras producers say that humans have long fattened animals for consump­tion and critics should get over it. They cite Gallic gastronomic excellence and more esoteric concepts of terroir - the notion of the "soil" and the French at­tachment to it - of national heritage and tradition.

Animal rights campaigners say foie gras is sym­bolic of man's unnecessary exploitation of other sen­tient creatures. (Taken to its logical conclusion this

means everyone becoming vegan,

they concede.) For them, the gavage is the height of human "barbarity" to­wards animals. Throw money into the mix and there is much at stake. France produces around 19,000 tonnes of the product a year, worth an estimated €l.7bn ($2bn), from around 38 mil­lion ducks and geese. That is 75% of the world's production, and gives direct and indirect employment to up to 100,000 people.

Most people, if asked to draw a picture of a stereotypical French­man, would depict somebody who looks like Boissiere, with his drooping white Asterix mous­tache and black beret. His tour of the farm is accompanied by a repertoire of jokes and witty asides delivered in a

HHn

twanging accent laced with smatterings of Occitan, the regional language of south-westernFrance. Bois­siere is on home territory: the south-west of France is duck country. There is hardly a restaurant not of­fering the fowl in some form - foie gras, confit de canard, magret de canard, duck wings, duck salad, duck with prunes, duck with beans, duck with duck - the permutations are many and varied.

What cannot be eaten is turned into manure, lip­stick, feather pillows, down duvets or powder puffs. There is a joke in the business that the only part of a duck that cannot be sold is its quack.

Boissiere's hybrid mulard ducks - a cross between barbary and peking breeds - are in any case mute and all male (female duck livers apparently not be-ingup to the task). At his farm, near Frespech, 30km north-east of the town of Agen in the departement of Lot-et-Garonne, Boissiere believes that the foie gras controversy is symbolic of the modern-day clash between urban and rural communities.

He insists that force-feeding ducks dates back to the time of the Egyptians around 2500BC and causes the birds no suffering. "Our mantra is respect. Re­spect for the environment, respect for the birds, respect for the customers. You cannot force-feed a duck if it is afraid or suffering.

"Human beings raise animals to feed themselves... In the years after the war, when there was a short­age of food, people were used to raising, killing, bleeding, skinning, plucking and cooking an animal. Today there is a rupture between those who live in urban areas and those who live in the country. Everything is sanitised. People take their meat from the supermarket fridge and don't even touch it. They touch a plastic wrapping. They have lost their bear­ings about where that meat has come from."

Boissiere says that the California ruling is wrong, and wants the French government to fight it. "I believe this is a misunderstanding; it's been done because it's an easy vote-winner, but it's based on ignorance of the facts. Anyone who thinks otherwise can come here and see for themselves."

Brigitte Gothiere, of the group Stop Gavage, could not disagree more. "We are not talking about giv­ing the right to vote to ducks. We are talking about respect for a living thing. The ducks used for foie gras have never, ever migrated. They are selected for their ability to stock fat in the liver as opposed to the tissue around the liver. The producers argue that

force-feeding is reversible and does not make them sick. This is not true.

"If the gavage is fine and natural, why don't the producers show people? The only argument this multimillion-euro industry can fall back on is that it's tradition."

Boissiere's current batch of two-day-old ducks will be producing foie gras for Christmas, when the delicacy is as traditional in France as turkey is in Britain. His fresh foie gras is currently selling at €43 a kilo; a 6oog jar of traditional whole foie gras costs €64. "And here's the bad news of the day," he tells the mostly French visitors to his farm. "We have to kill the ducks to get the foie gras." They laugh the laugh of the converted, and then head for the farm shop.

Gothiere is not too discouraged. "We're de­lighted with the California ban. It will take time for the French to lose their taste for foie gras, but we'll keep on fighting to change their mentality," she said. "We know they love it, but the pleasure is not worth the suffering. And you cannot use tradition as an excuse."

FR = fine cuisine

Foic Gras - Memory

- wines

- cheese

- patisserie

But controversy: foie gras

What is? goose/duck liver

How made? force feeding -> liver swell lOx -> creamy pate (expensive: 64€)

Arguments for (producers):

1) natural (gorging before migration)

2) man always fattens animals

Arguments against (animal welfare activists)

1) cruel, inhumane -^ inflict physical damage

2) past not an excuse

Fuel to fire: CAL ban

Key Word diagram

French cuisine

but foie-gras

I

What

For

I gorge always

How

—t~ "— CAL ban