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In some circles, admitting you eat foie gras is like saying you enjoy drowning kittens in your spare time.

Half the Western world, from the Prince of Wales to California legislators, is banning foie gras – a duck or goose liver swollen to up to 10 times its natural size as a result of force-feeding. Restaurants sometimes take it off the menu to avoid controversy, and even fanatics eat it with a spoonful of barely suppressed guilt.

Earlier this year, protests by the animal-rights group Liberation BC raised the ire of several B.C. restaurateurs, some of whom ultimately pulled foie gras from their menus.

“We're hoping to make Vancouver the first city in Canada to ban the sale of this cruel product,” says Joanne Chang, Liberation BC's spokeswoman.

While the battle lines have so far been drawn in intense black and white, there is an option that introduces a shade of grey: “ethical” foie gras. That such a product can reach sustainable commercial levels of production, however, and satisfy both chefs and protesters, is doubtful.

Traditional foie gras is produced by gavage, which involves the insertion of a funnel down the throats of ducks or geese at feeding times to allow force-feeding in the weeks before slaughter.

Ethical foie gras, however, relies on the natural gorging instincts of free-range geese, which stuff themselves in fall and early winter to store fat for migration. As a result, ethical foie gras is only produced immediately following the gorging period, and in much smaller quantities than traditional foie gras.

Ethical foie gras is not as rich as traditional foie gras, though it does have a “nearly there” quality. The most hailed example, Patería de Sousa's Foie de Ganso Iberico, which won the Paris International Food Salon Coup de Coeur for innovation in 2006, is smaller than traditional foie gras, darker in hue, coarser and with a muskier, more complex flavour.

The price of a clear conscience? Patería de Sousa's Foie de Ganso Iberico sells at about $145 per 180-gram jar online at IberGour.com, which ships in Europe. While Patería de Sousa's product is not commercially available in Canada, at least one restaurant, Basque in Nanaimo, B.C., has imported the product directly.

“I did a seven-week trip through Spain to do my research before I opened the restaurant and that's where I found [Patería de Sousa's foie gras],” says Basque's Valerie Barbour, who is impressed with the product.

According to Ian Walker of Mariposa Farm near Plantagenet, Ont., – an organic farm, restaurant and distribution company – small Canadian farmers have been producing a similar product for some time, albeit in small quantities.

Mariposa Farm, for example, produces about 20 kilograms a year of goose foie fattened as a result of natural gorging.

“It's beautiful, but there's a limited market for it,” Mr. Walker says. “It's more expensive and it's less available.” The product is sold at Mariposa Farm in early winter for about $110 a kilogram.

Mr. Walker doesn't see a way to supply high-volume users, such as restaurants, with this type of product. (Most Canadian producers of traditional foie gras use moulard ducks that do not engage in migratory gorging.) While Mr. Walker says his supply is fairly predictable, other attempts at production, such as Patería de Sousa's – which reportedly failed to deliver on its contract to supply Selfridges earlier this year because of unseasonably warm weather that interfered with the gorging behaviour – have provided a supply that is at best unsteady.

Most chefs who use foie gras don't consider the product unethical, and are primarily concerned with quality. Earlier this year, Robert Belcham of Fuel Restaurant in Vancouver, which was targeted by Liberation BC, visited his Quebec supplier, Aux Champs d' Élisé.

“The visit solidified my view that what they're trying to do is create a product for people to eat that is of the highest quality,” Mr. Belcham says.

According to Martin Picard of Au Pied de Cochon restaurant in Montreal, whose signature dish is a foie gras poutine, foie gras has become part of Quebec tradition. “I've heard that the [ethical foie gras] is not the same quality … but I've never tried it myself.”

Whether an ethical foie gras product would address protester concerns is also questionable. Mr. Belcham, who spoke with members of Liberation BC when Fuel was targeted says, “This is really not a foie gras issue for the protesters, it's a meat issue. Foie gras is just a stepping stone.”

The fact that another animal-rights group, Vancouver Animal Defence League, launched an e-mail and phone campaign against Basque restaurant, which uses the Spanish ethical product, supports the point. “[The group] refused to acknowledge the fact that [an ethical product] even exists,” Ms. Barbour says.

For now, however, limited supply and high prices – not protests – are likely to keep these products out of consumer hands.