foie gras business

Foie gras (the fattened liver of ducks or geese) holds a special place in D’Artagnan’s identity and history. Daguin and her co-founder started the company specifically to distribute fresh foie gras in the mid-1980s, at a time when American chefs could only get foie gras canned from Europe[16]. Today, D’Artagnan is widely regarded as the largest foie gras distributor in the United States[17]. It sources foie gras from a couple of farms in upstate New York – chiefly Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farm – which collectively raise approximately 350,000 ducks per year, yielding about $15 million worth of foie gras livers annually[18]. In practice, this makes D’Artagnan the dominant player in U.S. foie gras supply, since only a handful of farms produce foie gras nationally. (Foie gras production is heavily concentrated in France; by contrast, U.S. production is niche, and foie gras is actually outlawed in some countries on animal welfare grounds – e.g. it’s illegal to produce in the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, and others[19].) Foie gras remains one of D’Artagnan’s signature and most controversial products. While it likely accounts for a modest portion of the company’s overall revenue (relative to staples like beef or chicken), foie gras is a high-margin delicacy and a distinguishing offering for D’Artagnan. The company has indicated that many chefs value having access to quality foie gras; in late 2019, when New York City passed a law to ban foie gras sales in the city (effective 2022), D’Artagnan saw a surge in demand from NYC restaurants before the ban. Ariane Daguin reported a 30% jump in foie gras sales within NYC and signed 100 new restaurant accounts in the weeks after the ban’s announcement – as many chefs sought to “send a message” of support and feature foie gras while they still could[20]. (In practice, that NYC ban has been delayed and challenged in court. New York State authorities and a judge intervened, arguing the city exceeded its authority, so the ban did not go into effect in late 2022 as planned[21]. As of 2025, foie gras can still be sold in NYC, pending ongoing legal outcomes.) D’Artagnan’s leadership strongly defends foie gras as humane and traditional. Ariane Daguin – whose own father was a renowned foie gras chef in France – argues that the force-feeding process (“gavage”) is often misunderstood[22][23]. She notes that ducks and geese naturally fatten their livers in the wild before migration, and claims that when done properly on farms, the birds do not suffer as activists allege[23][24]. “The vegetarian activists are trying to tell the world that raising ducks for foie gras is cruel… and that is just not true,” Daguin said in an interview, maintaining that her farms raise animals in a humane way and that stressed or mistreated birds “just die on you” and wouldn’t produce foie gras[22][25]. This pro-foie-gras stance has put D’Artagnan at odds with animal welfare groups, as discussed below.