Feature Story - Wolfgang Puck bans foie gras, adds veg options, and more:
March 22, 2007
Celebrity Chef Announces Strict Animal-Welfare Policy
By KIM SEVERSON
Wolfgang Puck, the Los Angeles chef whose culinary empire ranges from
celebrity dinners at Spago to a line of canned soups, said yesterday
that he would use eggs and meat only from animals raised under strict
humane standards.
With the announcement, Mr. Puck has joined a small group of top chefs
around the country who refuse to serve foie gras, the fattened liver of
ducks and geese. But Mr. Puck, working with the Humane Society of the
United States, has taken his interest in animal welfare beyond ducks.
He has directed his three companies, which together fed more than 10
million people in 2006, to buy eggs only from chickens not confined to
small cages. Veal and pork will come from farms where animals are not
confined in crates, and poultry meat will be bought from farmers using
animal welfare standards higher than those put forth by the nation's
largest chicken and turkey producers. Mr. Puck has also vowed to use
only seafood whose harvest does not endanger the environment or deplete
stocks.
"We decided about three months ago to be really much more socially
responsible," he said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "We
feel the quality of the food is better, and our conscience feels
better."
Many chefs at high-end restaurants, some smaller food-service chains and
grocery chains like Whole Foods have refused to buy meat and eggs unless
animals are raised under certain conditions. In 2000, McDonald's became
the first American food company to impose minimum animal-welfare
standards, like increasing cage size, on its egg producers. But Mr.
Puck's program goes much further than most corporate animal-welfare
policies, and he is the flashiest culinary name yet to join with animal
rights groups in the movement to change farming practices.
Mr. Puck's ventures include 14 fine-dining restaurants mostly on the
West Coast. The flagship is Spago in Los Angeles, which helped him
become the nation's first celebrity chef. He also runs more than 80
Gourmet Express restaurants, many of which are in airports, and sells
frozen pizza, soups, kitchen cookware and cookbooks. Mr. Puck estimated
his companies' value at $360 million.
Since 2002, at least one animal-rights activist group has tried to
persuade Mr. Puck to stop using foie gras from ducks that are force fed
extra amounts of grain to fatten their livers and veal from calves
chained to small crates and fed a liquid diet to keep their flesh white
and tender.
The group, Farm Sanctuary, protested in front of Spago and started a Web
site called wolfgangpuckcruelty.org, which has since been taken down.
Mr. Puck dismissed those efforts and said he decided to make the change
as a result of a few trips to large-scale farms, discussions with the
Humane Society and a desire to mark his 25 years in the business with
something more significant than the kinds of big parties he is used to
holding for the Oscars.
"I have been telling people we have to stand for something for the next
25 years," he said. "It's time for us to make a statement and a time for
us to see how we treat what we eat."
Mr. Puck said prices would increase only a few percentage points on some
items.
As many as 98 percent of eggs come from chickens kept in banks of small
cages to facilitate mass production, said Diane Storey, a spokeswoman
for United Egg, which represents most major egg producers. She and
Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, which
represents major producers of chickens for meat, said their groups had
science-based animal welfare certification programs that used humane and
ethical guidelines.
"We applaud the fact that he sells a whole lot of chickens," Mr. Lobb
said. "But we think our program is very progressive and he should look
at ours before he goes off with the Humane Society."
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
