A ban on foie gras? Could this really be Chicago?

The issue might have stopped there, but it brought foie-gras farming to the attention of Alderman Moore, who said he was horrified as he learned about the production. Trotter has stopped short of endorsing the ban, though he continues to keep it off his restaurant's menu.

For his part, Tramonto says he's mostly disappointed at the prospect of the ban, which would take effect 30 days after it's passed.

"I think government stepped into a situation where they're going to start to dictate what we can eat and what we can't eat," he says. He serves foie gras every night at his restaurant in a variety of ways: as a cold terrine, in sauces, sautéed and served with seasonal fruit.

Tramonto says he shies away from serving some foods - such as threatened fish - but after visiting foie-gras farms, he considers them more humane than many of the factory farms that produce chicken and pork.

"There are a lot of other bigger fish to fry than these little foie-gras farms," he says.

Activists say they're hardly condoning other factory-farming practices, but they see foie-gras production as both a particularly abhorrent example and a reachable target.

"Foie gras is extreme cruelty," says Gene Bauston, the president and cofounder of Farm Sanctuary, which has led the charge against the food. Birds undergoing the force-feeding pant and have difficulty walking, he says, and their livers cease to function.

"I've seen ducks that have come out of these places, and I'm convinced the practice can't be done humanely."

But workers at Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the nation's largest producer, say people need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize when they view the practice. They point out that the American Veterinary Medical Association decided not to criticize the practice after investigating it.

"We're an easy target because there are so few of us," says Marcus Henley, operations manager at the farm. In addition to a gag reflex, he says ducks lack the soft tissue in their esophaguses that would make a tube uncomfortable. "There's been a considerable amount of research done to answer these questions: Is the process harmful, does it hurt the animals? And the research shows that it does not."

If the ban passes, only a dozen or so restaurants in Chicago would be affected, but chefs, like Tramonto, feel strongly about their right to serve it.

Mayor Richard Daley has backed them, declaring that the city shouldn't be in the business of dictating what people eat, while one foie-gras-serving chef - Didier Durand of Cyrano's Bistrot - found his restaurant vandalized after he testified against the ban.

In France, meanwhile, where 80 percent of foie gras is still produced, a different kind of law was passed this fall. Fearful of European attempts to ban the practice, legislators officially declared the delicacy part of France's heritage, lending it the same cultural protection as Loire Valley castles and the Eiffel Tower.

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