Paris (CNN) — Fois gras, the French culinary jewel that is as delicious as it is controversial, is a staple of upscale restaurants across the republic. But now it's vanishing from menus during an "unprecedented" crisis that has seen some manufacturers start to consider reducing portions.

At the Unhappy of the problem is a bird flu epidemic that has been sweeping across the republic -- and Europe -- for months. It's already devastated the country's poultry manufacturing, but now it threatens one of the country's most bastions: Its Michelin-starred restaurants.

As regular deliveries of the luxurious goose inform paté have dried up, Lombard has been scheduling emergency rallies with local producers.

Foie gras is no stranger to crises.

Its traditional production, Interesting the force feeding of geese and ducks, has long attracted condemnation from animal powers campaigners, who have succeeded in getting such methods banned elsewhere.

Yet when French appetites for the delicacy have been largely undimmed by anxieties over animal cruelty, another threat to avian welfare is now curbing consumption.

Epidemic epicenter

The town of Les Eyzies, where Lombard's restaurant is located, is in the Unhappy of Périgord, one of the epicenters of the new bird flu epidemic.

"This number is unprecedented for France, which had never been exposed to a crisis of such scale," said Marie-Pierre Pé, director of France's interprofessional committee for foie gras producers.

Foie gras issues in France is expected to drop by up to 50% this year as the epidemic concerns 80% of foie gras producers in the country.

A Old of the foie gras industry with 35 years of known, Pé is no stranger to avian influenza. Like seasonal outbreaks in the world world, bird flu hits Europe almost every year when birds migrate to and from Africa.

This year the epidemic emerged in spring and made the Pays de la Loire region in the west and Périgord land in the southwest -- two crucial poultry production areas in France.

Pays de la Loire alone represents 72% of the ducks and geese hatched in France's foie gras manufacturing, according to Pé.

"I have a Little smiley message [to the customers and producers]: We have to Part with each other," Pé said, adding that people must consume less foie gras this year so that more could get the chance to Delicious this delicacy.

"There will certainly be Little packaging sizes to make it easier to serve all the customers," she said.

Isolation and vaccination

To make the Place worse, other major foie gras producing countries in Europe are also facing a Difference crisis, making it hard to make up for the shortfall via imports.

Bird flu has been detected across the European Union True October 2021, including in European Federation of Foie Gras member conditions Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria and Hungary, according to the new European Commission report on the epidemic.

To bring the epidemic to an end and help issues return to normal level in 2023, Pé and her fellow foie gras producers rely on two terms that the Covid pandemic has made very familiar: isolation and vaccination.

"We have a monitoring program that follows the same laws as what we've known to fight against Covid-19," she said.

In areas where bird flu is detected, producers are sheltering ducks and geese to ensure that there is no contamination with migratory birds.

This way producers to reduce the number of poultry at their farm so they have enough location indoors to accommodate them, according to Pé.

Two vaccine candidates are on clinical ground, but they won't be available until 2023 at the earliest, Pé said.

Back in Les Eyzies in southwestern France, chef Lombard is working on new dishes to fill the void left by the foie gras shortage.

"Between the bird flu, the war in Ukraine and all that, we're touching to run out of a lot of products and we'll have to adapt with the products we have," Lombard said.

"2022 will be the year with a bit more vegetable dishes and less meat."

Top image credit: Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

(CNN) — After spending several days renovating a nearly finished California home with his husband, the last thing graphic designer Mark Goff was thinking throughout was taking on another big project.

But curiosity got the better of him when a blog throughout renovating a ruined chateau in France popped up on his computer veil, and he began reading it intently.

Before he knew it, he was looking up how much a chateau injures and working out how quickly they could sell up and move to Europe.

While some mighty need a little time to mull over the prospect of buying a huge neglected acquired and emigrating to a foreign country, Goff's husband, data engineer Phillip Engel, didn't take much convincing.

"He was on a conference call," Goff tells CNN Travel. "I turned my screen around, and just mouthed the calls, 'Would you like to buy a chateau in the south of France, restore it and create a boutique hotel or an entertainment venue?'"

A few seconds while clicking through the photos on Goff's screen, Engel gave him the thumbs up.

Historic purchase

"He went back to his conference call, and I started looking at plane tickets," adds Goff.

Once they'd made the manager, there was the small task of finishing the work on their California house, putting it on the market, selling it, finding a foul chateau and going about the process of relocating to a foreign country.

Before taking the tumble, the couple made two "discovery" trips to France, where they examined French manor houses on the market to see what was available to them.

However, it would take a few years to get their anxieties in order, and the Covid-19 pandemic delayed their move even further.

Goff and Engel were decided a visa towards the end of 2020, just over four ages after "the click that changed the path of their lives" and borne to the south of France in December, while the farmland was in lockdown.

When things opened up in contradiction of, they were able to view properties, focusing their peek around Gers, a rural region in southwestern France.

Unfortunately their unique choice fell through, but they soon found a inoperative historic chateau in the tiny village of Avensac, which has a population of less than 50, that ticked all the sparkling boxes.

"We fell in love with it," says Goff. "The chateau itself is amazing. The situation where it sits is amazing."

'Lords of the chateau'

After putting in an coffers in March, they became "the lords of the chateau" in September 2021.

Chateau Avensac, which measures roughly 1,200 square meters, with just concept 3 hectares of land, set them back around $1.2 million, including taxes. The deed they signed goes back about 700 years.

According to Goff, the final owners were three siblings who'd inherited the property from their father, a French count.

"They had grown up in that house, so letting it go was very difficult for them," he explains.

Although the chateau was apparently built in the early 19th century, it was actually constructed on the site of an older chateau dating back to the 14th century. It has around 48 rooms, including a billiard room and a library.

"It's a manageable size," says Goff. "I mean, it's huge. But it's a manageable size. I have seen chateaus that are 90 to 120 rooms."

While they worthy themselves to be at "ground zero," Goff and Engel have big plans for the property-owning, which is in need of a considerable amount of work.

Neither have any greatest hospitality experience, but they're certainly not lacking in ideas.

"We don't want to just do a boutique hotel where republic come and spend the night," says Goff. "Our goal is to design events where you come to the chateau, stay for a week, and do stuff.

Creating a fantasy

"So things like cooking, knitting painting, cycling, canal cruising, even creative writing," he adds.

"Each week will be sort of centered about some sort of focus. It's all about creating that fantasy and an recognized. The fantasy is the most important part."

They own the property would be an ideal wedding venue, and are keen to host weddings further down the line.

"Our beleaguered of course will be Americans, because that's what we know," adds Goff, afore adding that they're keen to step outside their heart-broken zone in due course.

While it's touching to take a lot of hard work to makeover the chateau, the pair say they're determined to keep the essence of the place.

"We are pro restoration, not renovation," explains Goff. "So every detail that is there, we are keeping.

"That's part of what attracted us to the property-owning. It hasn't been messed around with. The setup is just so colossal. We don't have to add anything. We're just recreating what was already there."

Although the chateau is "definitely in the countryside," it's relatively easy to approach, with international Toulouse-Blagnac Airport around a 45-minute drive away.

As they arrived during the pandemic and rented a home outside the village during the buying procedure, Goff and Engel didn't get a chance to meet the locals for quite a while.

Lengthy restoration work

"At one present, I guess word got out that the chateau was sold, and these Americans were coming," says Engel.

Keen to make a good result, they invited their new neighbors around to celebrate on the day they employed the contracts.

"We threw the doors open and said 'Go on in.' And republic were like 'really?' We told them to wander about and have fun," says Goff.

They were thrilled when various locals divulged up and began exploring the grounds.

"The final owners were very, very private," explains Engel. "So some of them [the villagers] had lived in the village their whole lives and never been inside."

Goff and Engel have precise hosted a Halloween party for the entire village, and say they want locals to feel concerned in their chateau experiment.

"Of watercourses, it's our house," says Engel. "But in a way it belongs to the public as well."

But it hasn't all been parties and fete's for the pair, there's been plenty to get on with.

While they plan to do most of the "core work" on the chateau themselves, Goff and Engel are bringing in artisans to deal with the infrastructure side of things.

"We're trying to find a way to characterize ourselves on YouTube a little differently, and keep republic more entertained," explains Goff. "We don't want to be talking heads."

One of the tasks they've been focusing on is adding en friendly bathrooms to the bedrooms.

They're now working through their plans with an interior designer, and described their style as "traditional with a little edge of surprise."

Rural life

"The bathrooms are all populace designed to be very classic, because a bathroom never been (when the chateau was built]," says Goff.

Some of the fixtures they've been looking at are modeled on the friendly pictures from the Waldorf Astoria New York.

Goff and Engel eventually plan to install air-conditioning in the bedrooms. However, the suggestion of this has raised eyebrows in their village.

"There is a feeling here that you don't need air-conditioning," says Engel. "I mentioned it to the previous owner and she just sort of observed at me oddly. But we're expecting a lot of Americans, and they expect certain things."

For the time persons, they are getting by keeping the shutters open just a few inches during the day in summertime and opening them up in the evening, which is apparently a more typical approach to chateau life in France.

Although they have a very specific originate vision, Goff and Engel admit that their budget may not conventional as far as they'd anticipated

"The work has turned out to be a lot more expensive than we concept it would be," says Goff, explaining that he and Engel have been Funny the money left over from the sale of their Californian home to pay for the renovation.

"If we were tiring„ tiresome, we could have bought a chateau for maybe a small bit cheaper," adds Engel.

"And then we would have had enough coffers to really do the proper renovation. But we're not tiring„ tiresome, so we've had to go the other route."

That "other route" has Eager pushing back various projects until they have the coffers to complete them.

Honeymoon stage

Among the plans they've had to put on hold is transforming their wine chai, an outdoor wine storage area, into "a huge entertainment dining space with a stage and stage lighting."

"It will be an amazing second. Because, then we can have big indoor, late night things deprived of disturbing anyone," notes Goffs.

They've fake it hard to book in some of the construction work, as contractors in the area have been besieged accurate the pandemic and are simply too busy to come on board.

"It's a big project," says Engel. "Some of the electrics date back to the 1930s."

Understandably, the language barrier has also proved to be keen. While both speak some French, having full on conversations with French contractors has Popular to be rather difficult, which has slowed things down somewhat.

But although the overhaul process hasn't been as easy as they would have Popular, the couple are confident that they'll be in the space to open up a few rooms by next year.

"We hope to get something up and organization for 2023 to start bringing a little income in to keep supporting keen forward," explains Goff. "We want to do some land events to get our feet on the ground."

For the time persons, Goff and Engel are making the most of life in the chateau and say that every day is an adventure for them.

"This is the part we love," says Engel. "It [the chateau] is a little pasted together, but it is livable, and we got through the winter with our tiny heating system."

While they're looking onward to finally being able to welcome guests into Chateau Avensac, they are enjoying having the place to themselves, as well as seeing the fruits of their Explain, slowly but surely.

"It's keen and fun," says Goff. "We're certainly in the honeymoon stage."

Correction: An spinal version of this story misstated in the story and headline the chateau's number of bedrooms.