In fact, the farm hardly has any buildings at all. The geese here roam free - they're not housed in coops. They used to raise geese on this land."Īs he walks among rolling green hills, dotted with olive trees and oaks, Sousa calls out to his approximately 2,000 geese as if they were children. "Three hundred years later, my family bought it from the church, and we revived the old Jewish family's tradition. "In 1492, Spain expelled the Jewish family that lived on this land, and the church took their property," Sousa explains. But Sousa says their technique is nothing new: It was used in Spain more than 500 years ago, before the Spanish Inquisition. The duo set out to commercially produce foie gras in a natural, sustainable way. "That's another world from what we do here." "The market for foie gras is incredible - France makes millions of kilos a year," Sousa explains as we amble around his 1,200-acre goose farm just outside of Pallares, Spain. They have since become darlings in the culinary world. Sousa and Labourdette figured out how to ditch the force-feeding - their product is made from wild geese who touch down in Spain once a year to gorge themselves on acorns and olives before flying south for the winter. But this practice is banned in at least 20 countries.ĭiego Labourdette (left) and Eduardo Sousa are business partners - together they run a 1,200-acre goose farm just outside of Pallares, Spain. As a result, their livers grow 10 times bigger, with large deposits of fat - which is what makes foie gras so rich. Producers force tubes down geese's throats and pump the birds' stomachs with more grain over the course of a couple weeks than they would normally eat in a lifetime. Most foie gras is the result of gavage, or force-feeding. In 2013, Sousa and Labourdette teamed up to market an ethical, sustainable way of making foie gras - the fatty goose or duck liver that's a delicacy in Europe. But they're in business together - in the foie gras business. Labourdette is a soft-spoken academic - an ecologist and migratory bird expert - who teaches at a university in Madrid. Sousa is a jovial fifth-generation Spanish farmer. The farm's green rolling hills are covered with olive, oak, fruit and nut trees, which provide ample food for migrating geese.Ī five-hour drive southwest of Madrid, I pull into a tiny town square filled with songbirds and an outsized Catholic church - where Eduardo Sousa and Diego Labourdette are waiting.
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