Top chefs in New York City are squawking over a New Jersey lawmaker’s plans to propose legislation that would ban the distribution and sale of foie gras in the Garden State, where a major supplier of the delicacy is based. Assemblyman Michael Panter said he plans to introduce the bill next week because the production of foie gras is a ``barbaric practice that has no place in any civilized society.’’ The legislation also would prohibit the distribution of the fattened fowl livers from New Jersey or into the state. Even a whiff of the New Jersey bill has already made some top chefs in the New York area nervous because a major supplier of the delicacy, D’Artagnan, is based in Newark. Anthony Bourdain, a celebrity chef and author, said a ban on the sale of foie gras would be ``a bomb in the New York restaurant scene. It simply goes back to Roman times. To ask chefs to cook without that is to ask a painter to not use the color blue.’’ Ariane Daguin, D’Artagnan’s owner and chief executive officer, said the proposed bill would devastate her 20-year-old business of about 120 employees. ``This is not American,’’ she said. ``In the country of immigrants, I find this an injustice.’’ She said ducks and geese force feed themselves as part of the migratory process and they don’t have gag reflexes. Bourdain, a native of Lavonia, N.J., said chefs would be devastated at the prospect of losing D’Artagnan and Daguin as a supplier. ``It’s like beating up on Julia Child,’’ he said.