The File GDB Open API supports reading metadata stored in the geodatabase. For example, you can do `ogrinfo -sql "GetLayerMetadata layerName" my_geodatabase.gdb/` to get the XML data from a certain layer in a geodatabase.
However, in FME the FileGeoDatabase Open File API reader does not support this, making this task very complicated or requiring a different reader that is dependent on expensive bloatware.