Foie Gras—French for fatty liver—is the grossly enlarged liver of a duck or goose. Medically known as hepatic lipidosis, foie gras is a disease marketed as a delicacy. Birds raised for this gourmet cruelty are force-fed enormous quantities of food through a long metal pipe three times a day. This process of deliberate and painful overfeeding continues for up to a month, by which time the birds’ livers have swelled up to twelve times their healthy size.
The process of forced feeding is so traumatic, and the confinement and conditions on foie gras farms so debilitating, that the pre-slaughter mortality rate for foie gras production is up to 20 times the average rate on other duck factory farms.†
During the course of our investigation, GourmetCruelty.com discovered corpses of ducks who had literally burst open through overfeeding. Investigators also found many birds who had choked to death on their own vomit. Necropsies performed by veterinarians on dead ducks taken from Hudson Valley Foie Gras determined that some of the birds had died of aspiration pneumonia—a painful and often fatal condition caused when, during the process of forced-feeding, food is pushed into the lungs of the birds.
California has banned Foie Gras. Why is King Estate selling it?
We who sign this will not support King Estate Winery until foie gras stops being sold there.
