Extreme Cruelty

•    Foie gras is the French term for "fatty liver". Marketed as a gourmet food, foie gras is a product of extreme cruelty to animals.

•    In modern foie gras factory farms, geese and ducks are intensively raised in large, enclosed barns and never see daylight until they are taken to slaughter.

•    For the last 2 weeks of their lives, the birds are forced into individual wire mesh cages, barely larger than their bodies, which virtually lock the birds in place. Thus restrained, the birds are unable to escape the farm workers and mechanized feeding system.

•    One by one, the farm worker grabs each immobilized bird and forces a metal pipe down their throats. An enormous amount of a corn-and-oil mixture is pumped by a machine directly into their gullets in just a few seconds—up to one-third of the birds' own body weight each day.

•    Birds suffer tremendously during and after the force-feeding process. Within a few weeks, their livers have swollen up to ten times their normal size, and the birds can scarcely stand, walk, or even breathe. Birds on foie gras farms have been observed panting and struggling to stand, using their wings to push themselves forward when their crippled legs can no longer support them.

•    The mortality rate on foie gras farms is up to 20 times higher than the death rate on conventional duck farms. Birds used in foie gras production often die when the metal feeding tubes puncture their necks, when their stomachs literally "burst" from the enormous volume of food they are forced to ingest and when force-feeding overfills them to the point of suffocation.

•    Necropsies performed on foie gras birds have shown them to suffer from grossly enlarged livers, lacerated tracheas and esophagi, pneumonia, throats and gullets severely impacted with undigested corn, massive internal bacterial and fungal growth - all consequences of the production method for which veterinary care is not profitable.

Origins

•    The idea for this cruel force-feeding practice is thought to have originated in ancient Egypt, after people noticed that wild geese consume large amounts of food prior to embarking on long migrations.

•    Because Egyptians, and later Romans, considered the fat-laden flesh and organs of those geese caught after pre-migration feeding to taste better, they sought to artificially induce and exaggerate the condition in captive geese.

•    Thereafter, the practice of force-feeding of captive geese and ducks took hold, later degenerating and devolving into what is now the modern foie gras industry.

Canadian Foie Gras Production

•    The entire Canadian foie gras industry is located in Quebec.

•    Three producers – Elevages Perigord, Aux Champs Delise and Palmex – account for the majority of production, but there are several other small producers in the Province.

•    Quebec has been producing foie gras for only 12 years. But in that time production has increased to 8500 livers per week, for a total output of 2 tons.

•    Today, about 500,000 ducks are killed each year in Quebec’s foie gras industry.

•    According to Quebec foie gras producers, they export about 30% of their products to the United States, 10% to the rest of Canada and the remainder is consumed within Quebec.

Global Foie Gras Production

•    France produces and consumes 90 percent of the world's foie gras, with roughly 24 million ducks and half a million geese killed annually. Nearly all the birds are raised in intensive confinement systems, and all endure brutal, intensive force feeding, several times a day, prior to their deaths.

•    Approximately 500,000 birds are killed annually for foie gras in the United States.

•    Other major producers of Foie Gras include Hungary, Bulgaria and China.

Industry Spin

•    The foie gras industry often tries to justify its practices by saying they are just an extension of the natural, pre-migration gorging behaviors of migratory fowl. This claim is entirely false.

•    While wild geese and ducks may increase their food intake prior to migration, they do not gorge themselves up until the point of death. The livers of wild ducks and geese have been known to expand up to twice their normal size prior to migration, but not a ten-fold expansion as is found in forced-feeding production.

•    Notably, the duck species (Muscovy and Mulard or Moulard) used in foie gras production are non-migratory and not predisposed to gorging of any kind.

•    Wild birds who do migrate quickly expend any excess fat during their migrations, unlike the severely confined birds in foie gras facilities. Artificially-induced gorging is extremely painful and debilitating to these birds.

International Response

•    In 2006, Chicago banned the sale of foie gras.

•    In 2004, California passed a law banning the sale and production of foie gras (effective in 2012).

•    In 2002, Pope Benedict XVI denounced force-feeding of geese as being in violation of Biblical principles.

•    In the past decade, a large number of nations have banned foie gras production, including Israel, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, and Poland.

•    Other countries whose laws effectively ban the force feeding of animals for foie gras production include Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.