French chefs want to put rare songbirds back on the menu

FOUR top chefs have infuriated animal lovers by demanding the right to eat an endangered songbird for the sake of France’s gastronomic heritage.

FRANCE-LUXURY- HOTEL-BIO

FOUR of France’s finest chefs have infuriated animal lovers by demanding the right to eat a rare songbird to preserve what they describe as the nation’s gastronomic heritage.

The chefs want the ban on poaching and eating ortolan buntings to be suspended for one weekend a year to allow French foodies to appreciate the creature for its taste, and compare it with such delicacies as foie gras.

Their call has fuelled an already fraught debate in France over an animal that has become a symbol of a wider battle between modernisers and traditionalists.

Europe’s ortolan bunting population has fallen by 84 per cent over the past 30 years, and nature lovers are battling to save it from extinction.

They describe it as one of the continent’s most beautiful birds and also one of its most tuneful. The first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are said to be based on the ortolan bunting’s song. The birds are caught in southwest France in the autumn as they migrate from northern Europe to Africa.

They are force-fed oats and maize to fatten them and killed by being drowned in Armagnac. One traditional recipe says the birds should be plucked, doused in more Armagnac, sprinkled with salt, pepper and nutmeg, wrapped in slices of Bayonne ham and vine leaves and then grilled.

They are eaten whole — bones and all — by diners who cover their heads with a linen napkin to ensure that they enjoy the smell and taste to the full.

Francois Mitterrand, the former French president, ate an ortolan bunting for his last supper before being confined to bed with the cancer, to which he succumbed in 1996.

Although France made the ortolan bunting a protected species in 1999, hunters in the southwest continue to trap them, with the authorities turning a blind eye.

The birds sell for up to $200 on the black market. However, campaigns by the French Bird Protection League against ortolan poaching have prompted officials to pledge to enforce the ban. Police have been instructed to pay particular attention to the offence, the interior ministry said.

However Michel Guerard, Alain Ducasse, Alain Dutournier and Jean Coussau, who are among France’s most esteemed chefs, are concerned that if poaching is stopped, a great French recipe will be lost.

They want a weekend set aside every year “for those who desire to taste these migrating birds”.

Mr Guerard said: “Let’s tell the hunters: bring your game and let’s pass on a historic culinary act.”

Alain Bougrain Dubourg, the chairman of the bird protection league, described their call as “pathetic”. “The future of our gastronomy will depend on the respect of living things and the quality of our products,” he said.

The league says that poachers catch about 30,000 ortolan buntings every year but that officials rarely prosecute. The offence carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail and a fine of $21,000.

Bird lovers have greeted with sceptism the government pledge to take tough action this year.

Henri Emmanuelli, the socialist politician who served the dish to Mr Mitterrand, has accused the league of self-promotion. He dismissed the claim that 30,000 ortolans were caught annually and said the bird was “more present in the media than in our plates”. He accused bird lovers of sacrificing gastronomic tradition for notoriety.

The Times