Foie gras is a “delicacy” that requires the indelicate force-feeding of geese and ducks to bloat their livers. Various UTUBE 
shows birds with bloody throats, barely able to walk and struggling to breathe. Yet Big Food, restaurateurs and even the American Veterinary Medical Association defend the gratuitous cruelty lest veal crates and other extreme “production agriculture” be questioned next. Foie gras is banned in Europe and other countries but a 2007 foie gras ban in Chicago drew ridicule from the Chicago Tribune’s food critic (“Has City Council finally quacked?” Will “quack-easies” surface?) and a Foie Gras Fest backlash from area chefs who served five-course foie gras meals.
P.S. The ban was repealed.
To produce “foie gras” (which literally means “fatty liver”), workers ram pipes down male ducks’ or geese’s throats two or three times daily and pump as much as 4 pounds of grain and fat into the animals’ stomachs, causing their livers to bloat to up to 10 times their normal size.
Many birds have difficulty standing because of their engorged livers, and they may tear out their own feathers and cannibalize each other out of stress.
The birds are kept in tiny wire cages or packed into sheds. On some farms, a single worker may be expected to force-feed 500 birds three times each day. Because of this rush, animals are often treated roughly and left injured and suffering. A PETA investigation at Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York (then called “Commonwealth Enterprises”) found that so many ducks died when their organs ruptured from overfeeding that workers who killed fewer than 50 birds per month were given a bonus. Many ducks develop foot infections, kidney necrosis, spleen damage, bruised and broken bills, and tumor-like lumps in their throats.
One duck had a maggot-infested neck wound so severe that water spilled out of it when he drank. Other investigations at Hudson Valley Foie Gras and America’s other leading foie gras producer, Sonoma Foie Gras in California, revealed that ducks were crammed into filthy, feces-ridden sheds and that others were isolated in wire cages that were so small that they could barely move.
Investigators also observed barrels full of dead ducks who had choked to death or whose organs had ruptured during the traumatic force-feeding process.
The investigators rescued 15 ducks, including two who were being eaten alive by rats because they could not move. Foie gras is so inhumane that in 2004 California passed a law banning the sale and production of foie gras effective in 2012.
Force-feeding has also been outlawed in,
- the U.K.
- Austria
- Germany
- the Czech Republic
- Finland
- Italy
- Luxembourg
- the Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- South Africa
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Denmark
- Israel
Join Sir Roger Moore and countless others around the world in refusing to eat foie gras. You can do your part to stop animal cruelty by doing the same as Sir Roger.
You can even take one more step by giving up all animal products for one month.
When we consider that the memory of the energy of the stress of the suffering birds is imbedded into the pate foods, then we cannot be surprised that more people are getting stressed and sick too.
Comments on this entry are closed.