A chicken (obviously): Don't eat a French one.
Sunset for France's famous chickens
Wall of preventive measures erected against bird flu jeopardizes future of a cultural icon
SUSAN SACHS
Special to The Globe and Mail
BOURG-EN-BRESSE, FRANCE -- The darling of gourmet chefs, cosseted every moment from egg to oven, the famous chickens of Bresse have long been promoted as the feathered equivalent of the finest French champagne.
By law, each of these pampered birds must be accorded 10 square metres of outdoor living space, far more room than most tourists get in French hotels. The chickens are used to roaming free, snacking on nature's grubs, slugs and seeds, and are entitled to squawk and dither in the sunshine for weeks beyond the lifespan of ordinary commercial poultry.
It is the only poultry in Europe with its own appellation, a mark of distinction shared by the finest wines and rarest cheeses, only slightly less serious than the French Legion of Honour. And it commands twice the price of ordinary chicken.
In the words of its promoters in the self-declared Bresse chicken capital of Bourg-en-Bresse, the meat is melt-in-the-mouth tender. Its fragrance is unforgettable. Its juiciness exceeds all bounds. Its flesh is white, infused with the fat that every gourmet knows makes all the difference between an ordinary and extraordinary cut of meat.
The significance of Bresse chickens is not exaggerated, said Georges Blanc, one of France's top-rated chefs and president of the local committee in charge of assuring the quality of certified Bresse poultry. "It's part of our history," he added. "It's something special; it has an appellation like the best wines and it's been made in the same way forever."
But the idyllic lives of the chickens, so integral to their market value and cultural cachet, is over. Bird flu has cast a shadow over the farmyards of east-central France, depriving the chickens of the conditions essential to their uniqueness and threatening to wipe out the centuries-old breed.
In the heart of the Bresse chicken country, at least a dozen wild birds have died from the virulent H5N1 virus. The disease also struck a turkey farm not far from Bourg-en-Bresse, leading to the forced slaughter of 11,000 chickens.
All poultry producers in the region, a low-lying bowl of territory between Burgundy and the Jura Mountains, have been ordered to confine their birds in enclosed buildings 24 hours a day to prevent new infections.
The chickens have never faced such a restriction, which contradicts the most fundamental of their strictly observed routines. "They are not used to being closed in. They are used to running," said Cyril Degluaire, a 26-year-old producer of Bresse chickens near the hamlet of La Baraque, midway between Macon and Bourg-en-Bresse.
"That's why they have such beautiful thighs. Now they knock at the door, demanding to go out."
Farmers say they do not know whether the birds will taste the same after spending their lives cooped up and being fed dehydrated alfalfa along with their customary feed of milk and corn to make up for missing the protein they used to find in the wild.
And if H5N1 contaminates the only hatching centre where all Bresse chickens are born, the breed -- unchanged for centuries -- could be lost forever.
"What's at stake," declared Jean-Michel Bertrand, a deputy mayor of Bourg-en-Bresse, "is the very survival of the poultry of Bresse."
Swathes of the Bresse area were in virtual lockdown this week.
No one was allowed on chicken farms other than the farmers. Trucks delivering chicks dropped their cargo at the top of country roads rather than at the farmhouse door, to avoid the possibility that drivers could inadvertently carry the virus from one place to another.
At the single "selection centre" that preserves embryos of the specific breed of Bresse poultry, workers have been ordered to don head-to-toe protection suits to reduce the risk of bird flu contaminating the treasured breeding stock.
"They have to take several showers at different stages and they have to go by bicycle or walking from one building to another," said Marie-Paul Meunier, the spokeswoman for the Bresse producers. "They have to wear the full contamination suits, just like in a nuclear power station."
Black and yellow signs have been installed on highway roundabouts, warning that the transport of all live birds has been prohibited.
While only 1.2 million authentic Bresse chickens are produced each year, their symbolic value weighs on the nation's psyche more heavily than the numbers might indicate. For many French, nostalgic for a rustic France that no longer exists, a Bresse chicken is a part of history, an icon of the lost countryside of artisans and small family farms near and dear to the nation's soul.
Le terroir, the soil, retains an almost mythic hold on the French heart and identity. To hear them wax on, it sometimes seems as though every Parisian would gladly give up city life for the authenticity of the old rural homestead; in reality, only 4 per cent of the work force still labours on farms.
The requirements the French government sets for the Bresse certification are strict. Chicks must come from the single centre that preserves the specific Bresse White breed and employs purebred males and females to produce thousands of eggs and hatchlings. Only a handful of growers are allowed to take the newborn chicks, feed them and prepare them for life in the sunshine. The birds must be raised outside before they are 35 days old.
Even a chick whose parents are true-blood Bresse has to be raised within the certification region, an area of 2,300 square kilometres, to qualify as an authentic Bresse chicken. And it must be fed only on corn, wheat and other grains that are also grown inside that zone, where the soil is heavy with limestone. Supplements include milk and butter, in addition to the wild grains, snails and other ground organisms foraged in their expanse of grassy yards.
The birds must be kept for at least nine weeks for young chickens, 11 weeks for hens and 23 weeks for capons, or castrated males that grow to an enormous size and are a favoured treat for the Christmas holidays in France.
In their final days of fattening, the birds are kept in individual cages in low light and fed extra rations of grains and milk, sometimes supplemented with rice.
Ms. Meunier, the spokeswoman, said some farmers have developed their own formulas and one swears that playing rock music to his chickens calms them in their fattening stage.
Even in death, or "self-sacrifice," as the farmers here prefer to call it, the Bresse chicken is bled, plucked and prepared by hand, an uncommon technique that has put off health officials in Canada and the United States, which have banned their import.
The 19th-century French food savant, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who was born in the Bresse area, called the pheasant "the king of earthly poultry," but made a nod to his native chickens when he complimented their plumpness and white flesh. He expressed regret that they were not more available in Paris restaurants.
That is no longer the case. The Bresse poultry lobby has jealously protected the value of its brand for more than 70 years, since it fought through the French courts to establish its chicken-raising area as a unique terrain producing unique birds.
Bresse chickens are rarely found in ordinary supermarkets. Most are sold directly to restaurants or top-end butcher shops, where they cost up to twice as much as other chickens. In recent years, Asians have shown a decided taste for the luxury poultry, but that market has dried up since the bird flu discoveries in Bresse last month sparked a ban on French poultry imports in more than 40 countries, including Canada.
Agricultural authorities have so far refused the Bresse poultry producers' request for an exemption from the confinement order.
The producers have turned to the government agency that administers such certifications, hoping for a dispensation that would permit them to continue to call their fowl Bresse chickens, even though they are not being raised according to the required conditions.
"We're going to try and continue to produce," said Ms. Degluaire, the farmer. "We're hoping that the government will lift the confinement order for us and let us just vaccinate instead. Otherwise, it's possible they won't let us say that these are real Bresse chickens."
The French government has promised to compensate poultry producers for their losses because of the bird-flu precautions, but no one, including Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau, has played down the gravity of the situation for the Bresse farmers.
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