Ducks and geese, the animals used to make foie gras, are social,
meticulously clean animals who enjoy preening their feathers and
flaunting their beautiful plumage. They are adept swimmers and fliers
and can even travel hundreds of miles each year during their
migrations.

Foie gras is an illness -- it is literally "fatty
liver" disease. It's an indelicate "delicacy," once favored by
gourmands, that decent people now won't touch, once they understand how
it is produced. Ducks and geese raised for foie gras are confined to
cramped, filthy pens and force-fed a heavy grain mixture three times a
day through feeding tubes shoved down their throats and into their
stomachs. Sometimes the metal tube scrapes the birds' throats and even
tears their esophagi; sometimes the amount of grain ruptures the birds'
stomachs, causing an agonizing death. Many of the surviving animals are
too sick to move for hours -- until the next feeding time, and then it
begins again.