The first time Michael Thomas of Hillcrest sunk his teeth into a decadently rich puck of foie gras, he closed his eyes and uttered, “Oh my God, this is like buttery heaven.” The seared, enlarged goose liver at the Marine Room, he recalls, “Was as sinfully delicious as the crispy fat on a broiled pork chop, but magnified 100 times.”

For food consultant Pam Wischkaemper of Carlsbad, her longstanding love affair with foie gras began in Paris and has since landed her on the battle lines with a San Diego-based protest group that’s persuaded 13 restaurants to take the delicacy off their menus.

According to Bryan Pease, co-director of the Animal Protection and Rescue League (APRL) in Hillcrest, the production of foie gras is “inherently cruel” and always involves mechanical force feeding of geese through metal tubes to enlarge their livers. After paying a visit to a foie gras farm in Stockton, his non-profit group came away with photographs and videotape of geese that he said were suffering from “lots of anal hemorrhaging and pressure on their organs from the force feedings.”

Those images, combined with pleading letters to chefs and the threat of APRL pickets in front of the restaurants, resulted in the recent removal of foie gras from the kitchens of Pamplemousse, Nine-Ten, Top of the Cove, Arterra and the Rancho Bernardo Inn, to name a few.

Yet in a series of columns that Wischkaemper wrote for the online publication Voice of San Diego, she questioned APRL’s tactics and its lack of campaigning against food producers in the egg, chicken and veal industries, where conditions reportedly aren’t any prettier. The articles generated a flurry of letters attacking her gastronomic point of view in defense of foie gras availability.

“I have no problem with animals being raised for consumption, and don’t give much thought to how a goose feels when it’s force fed,” says Wischkaemper. “I’m much more concerned about starving children. Nobody is forcing the protestors to eat foie gras, yet they’re forcing me not to eat it. If APRL had their way, nobody on the planet would eat anything that’s alive. I don’t think that I’m the devil incarnate because I enjoy meat.”

Pease, who advocates for vegan and vegetarian diets through his organization, says, “Foie gras production is drastically different compared to other meat industries, which can at least be improved. Most people want their food produced humanely, and you can’t do that with foie gras because forced tube feeding is a required element for making it.”

Marine Room Executive Chef Bernard Guillas concurs that foie gras production, which has been in practice for hundreds of years, can be tough on the animals. But he admits, “I’ve never visited a farm where I witnessed the cruelty.” His decision to remove it from the menu had already preceded a friendly, in-person dialogue he held with Pease two months ago, saying that it was simply time for a menu change.

Guillas nonetheless offers the same retort to APRL’s efforts as Wischkaemper. “They need to be consistent throughout their programs, and not just go after small industries. The volume of foie gras sold in the United States is much smaller compared to the number of chickens and turkeys raised for consumption.”

And with little foie gras available on the local restaurant scene, Guillas speculates what New Year’s Eve will be like. “It’s the biggest day of the year for foie gras,” he said.

Needless to say that in 2012 a state bill recently signed into legislation by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will make the production and sale of foie gras illegal in California.

According to Pease, the law can’t come soon enough. He recently spotted a quote in the media by a representative of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, who spouted that some people want foie gras as a pizza topping. “We’re trying to stop it from crossing that line,” he says.

In the meantime, Wischkaemper says she’s heard of chefs conducting “foie gras speakeasies” for regular customers who request it.

And for Thomas, who regards the goose liver as a “rare treat” because of its expense, “I’ll mourn the passing of foie gras from fine dining menus, yet with a guilty heart I would absolutely eat it again.”