Animals

Unseen Suffering: What Happens Inside the Foie Gras Industry

Foie gras has long been considered a delicacy in gourmet cuisine. Now, consumers, restaurants, and local governments are opening their eyes to the un-delicate truth behind this infamous dish.

Lauren Melchionda

Nov 18, 2024
(Originally Published: Apr 06, 2021)

Foie gras has long been considered a delicacy in gourmet cuisine. Now, consumers, restaurants, and local governments are opening their eyes to the un-delicate truth behind this infamous dish.

A lot goes into raising animals for food, especially in large-scale factory farms. Vaccines. Feed. Temperature controls. Antibiotics. While conditions are often horrifying, these measures are taken to prevent the spread of diseases, since factory farms are an ideal breeding ground. However, when it comes to raising ducks and geese for foie gras, disease is, ironically, the primary objective.

I am the co-founder of the DC Coalition Against Foie Gras and a member of the Duck Alliance, two groups that are seeking to end the abuse of ducks and geese for foie gras. We founded the DC Coalition Against Foie Gras in a community that was relatively new to pressure campaigning. While activists were witnessing rapid successes in the anti-fur movement and with animal welfare groups, we decided to build a campaign using effective pressure tactics and focused targeting of our own. We wanted to take on a campaign where we could get meaningful wins for animals in our own backyard, as we often did not have access to the companies that international activists targeted for fur-free policies.

We chose foie gras for several reasons: it has a limited number of suppliers, minimal cultural significance in the US, and is largely an indulgence for the wealthy, positioning us firmly on the right side of the class issue. We were surprised at how quickly we began to see victories, and how fast our community grew when they saw how easily a relatively small and inexperienced group of activists were able to take on restaurant after restaurant, securing foie gras-free policies. As we worked through a dozen campaigns in DC, we began to collaborate with cities all over the country, each running their own decentralized foie gras campaigns while simultaneously cheering each other on, and supporting each other digitally.

Thanks to the work of activists around the US, over 80 restaurants and restaurant groups—including Hai Hospitality, which was responsible for the force-feeding of roughly 9,000 ducks—have chosen to permanently remove foie gras from their menus. However, we are just getting started. Foie gras is a particularly cruel form of animal abuse, and here’s why we need to protest against it.

What Is Foie Gras?

Foie gras, a French delicacy, is—in essence—a diseased liver. Translated to English, foie gras is the “fatty liver” of a duck or goose who was force-fed to the point that the organ becomes stricken with a condition called hepatic steatosis. These distended, diseased organs are then consumed whole or ground up in the form of pates, mousses, or parfaits.

Which Animals Are Used for Foie Gras?

There are two types of birds unlucky enough to be chosen for foie gras production. Ducks— specifically the Mulard hybrid, Barbary, and Muscovy breeds—are most commonly targeted by the industry. Geese are also used and abused for foie gras, with breeds like the Landes goose falling victim to this cruel industry.

How Is Foie Gras Made?

In the US, 90% of foie gras is produced on two factory farms, Hudson Valley Farms and La Belle Farms, accounting for over 300,000 ducks who are painfully force-fed for this needless delicacy.

A few foie gras farms allow birds to be free-range, where they feed themselves rather than being forced and are killed at a certain time of year once their livers are fatty enough to be worth the slaughter. French law discourages this somewhat kinder approach, requiring gavage—the force-feeding process—to be used in order for fatty livers to be considered foie gras. But even in the more ethical scenario, sensitive, smart birds are denied their natural flying and traveling instincts, their lives, and their birthright to the skies. But the vast majority of foie gras farms are far more frightening.

Pre-Feeding Phase On conventional foie gras farms, the lives of ducks and geese are divided into two phases: pre-feeding and feeding. As birds enter the world, little do they know that their short lives will be full of suffering.

For many, their lives are tragically cut extremely short. Because only the livers of male ducks are desired, since males can put on more weight than females, all female chicks are killed within hours of being born—often by being brutally ground-up alive.

For those who remain, a short, but intensely abused life of misery lies ahead.

Start-Up Within the foie gras industry, the first month, or so, of a bird’s life is known as the start-up phase. Like conventional chicken farms that raise birds for meat or eggs, chicks are kept indoors as they grow from cute, peeping beings into more mature, ever-intelligent birds.

Growth During the growth stage, ducks and geese will experience some small semblance of freedom—the most they will ever know. When they are four to nine weeks old, these naturally wild birds are allowed outside to eat the plants and grasses on the surrounding farm. But they will never get to spread their wings and fly, or even leave the farm to discover what lies beyond.

It’s worth noting that birds in most factory farms never, ever get to see what life looks like beyond a dark and dirty shed—with the exception of their terrifying truck rides between buildings or to the end of their lives in the slaughterhouse.

Even though foie gras birds do get some outdoor time, the cruelty that’s to come outweigh any small moments of joy this fresh air brings.

Pre-Fattening And so it begins, as the birds are forced back inside the barn again for longer and longer periods of the day, during what’s known as the pre-fattening stage, as they are gradually introduced to their new, corn-based diet for nine to 13 weeks. This unnatural diet is a foreshadow of the suffering ahead This stage lasts from around nine to 13 weeks, when birds are between 28 and 63 days old.

Feeding Phase If ducks and geese knew the feeding phase was coming, they would undoubtedly be filled with dreaded terror. This is when the cruel force-feeding practice, known as gavage, begins. Birds are often confined into cages that constrict their bodies so tightly they cannot even turn around—reminiscent of the gestation crates that imprison pregnant pigs on factory farms. These cages are designed to prevent the birds from running away, trapping them as they await their turn at being tortured.

Confinement is terrible for any animal, but the worst part of gavage is the tubes. Workers grasp the necks of the birds one by one and force either a rubber or metal tube down their unwilling throats to pump the food in—all to fatten their livers as quickly as possible. Sometimes the feeding apparatus is equipped with a pneumatic pump that pushes the food down with compressed air and swift, but painful efficiency. Imagine being extremely stuffed after eating an oversized and unappetizing meal. Then magnify those unpleasant feelings many times over. This is a small taste of what a goose or a duck experiences during gavage. And much worse.

This forced-feeding phase lasts around two weeks. Every day—twice a day—their beaks are forced open and their stomachs are pumped full to the point of bursting.

Is Foie Gras Really Cruel?

The Foie gras industry and its supporters often argue that force-feeding birds isn’t as cruel as it looks. They often dismiss the attempts to paint this barbaric practice as abuse and chalk them up as “misunderstandings.” This is a ludicrous claim, especially when you consider how much injury and premature death can occur thanks to gavage.

Birds are delicate, sensitive, and emotional creatures who can be easily be hurt—just like other animals, and humans, too. When a tube is forced down their throats, severe—and often fatal—damage can be inflicted on their tissues. Even worse, food is sometimes forced into the lungs of birds by accident. Bones and wings can easily be broken or fractured in the process. And the resulting swollen livers can grow to be 10 times the normal size—just imagine how uncomfortable that would feel in your own body. Foie gras birds also suffer from heat stress, lesions, fungal infections, diarrhea, pneumonia, lameness, and sternum fractures.

Simply said, there’s nothing about foie gras that isn’t cruel.

How Are Geese and Ducks Killed?

Just as most chickens are killed in the US, ducks and geese meet the same tragic and horrifying fate. Known as live-shackle slaughter, the birds are hung upside-down, their legs forced into metal shackles. Their heads are then dunked into an electrified water bath that is meant to render them unconscious—something that all-too-often doesn’t work. Their throats are then sliced open, causing them to begin bleeding out before being thrown into a scalding tank of water. Many birds wind up being boiled alive in the scalding water—an excruciating and agonizing end to their already agonizing lives.

No bird and no being deserves this death.

Is Foie Gras Illegal in the US?

Foie gras is still legal in most of the US since there is no federal legislation banning the production, sale, or consumption of this painful product. But many states are fighting against the cruel foie gras industry.

For many years, states like New York and California have been at the center of the foie gras debate. In California, a judge ruled in 2020 that foie gras can only be purchased if it’s produced out of state—meaning that California bans the production of foie gras within its state lines. This ruling upholds a ban, forbidding restaurants from offering it on their menus, along with other restrictions that essentially make the industry illegal. And in 2019, New York City moved to ban these fatty livers from restaurants and other points of sale. The lone two foie gras producers in the state—Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farm—then sued the city; as mentioned, these two major producers supply most of the foie gras sold commercially in the US. In 2022, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets struck down the ban, saying that it violated state law. In 2024, the New York State Supreme Court ruled against the foie gras ban.

Which countries have banned foie gras?

Many countries recognize the unconscionable brutality of the foie gras industry, and have banned its production within their borders. These countries are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.

India has gone a step further by being the only country that has also banned the import and sale of foie gras.

What Can You Do To Help?

So many of the same practices that occur on factory farms that mass produce chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, and other animals raised for food also take place in foie gras production. So when you speak out, and take action, against all unethical farming practices you can open the doors that shroud so much animal suffering. Most of all, you can create true change for animals and our food system.

The foie gras movement is a proof of concept for action leading to immediate change. As of November 2024, Austin, Texas is two restaurants away from being the first city to be foie gras-free without legislation. (Legislation became impossible due to The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, also known as the “Death Star” law, which prevents cities and counties from passing progressive local measures stronger than state law.) To achieve this significant progress, activists in Austin were relentless in protesting restaurants until they committed to a foie gras-free policy. Since they started their first campaign in 2023, the number of restaurants selling foie gras in Austin has plummeted from 30 to just two.

There has never been a better time to get involved in the anti-foie gras movement. Foie gras-free campaigns are the perfect fit for communities new to pressure campaigning. They are highly winnable (many have been won with a single protest), require few people to be effective, and are easy to launch, as movement momentum helps generate community support. We don’t need to wait for change; foie gras restaurants exist in most US cities. If you would like to know more, start a foie gras campaign in your city, or join one of our cage-free campaigns, reach out to a field organizer in your area!