Foie Gras an Industry of Shame

California and more than a dozen countries have banned its production. Public figures from the pope to Pat Buchanan have condemned it. Wolfgang Puck has removed it from his menus. And now Minnesota is beginning to discuss the issue, as well.

At first blush, the subject of so much controversy is a mere table treat a heavy cracker spread consumed only by the most elite foodies. It’s called foie gras, French for "fatty liver."
It’s also the deliberately diseased liver of a factory-farmed duck, and Minnesota is home to one of only four producers in the United States.

Minnesota’s foie gras producer may be smaller than its three domestic competitors, but it uses the same method forcing birds to ingest far more than they would normally consume to produce the enlarged livers it markets.

Foie gras has a well-deserved notoriety. It’s one of the most abusive factory farm products, since workers shove tubes down birds’ throats in order to make them consume a grossly large amount of food multiple times each day for the last couple weeks prior to their slaughter. This unnatural process does not mimic anything in nature, and it causes the birds’ livers to become diseased and expand multiple times their normal size.

New York is a larger foie gras producer than Minnesota, with two factory farms in the state that force-feed birds. Even there, experts condemn the practice. Dr. Ward Stone, the state’s wildlife pathologist, opposes foie gras production, stating that it leads to "short tortured lives" for these animals.

The Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare is the European Union’s most authoritative scientific body on farm animal welfare. Not surprisingly, after a thorough investigation, the committee concluded that force-feeding to produce foie gras "is detrimental to the welfare of the birds."

And the prestigious Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production recently recommended that force-feeding birds for foie gras be phased out.

While describing the effects of force-feeding, poultry scientist Dr. Ian Duncan states: "In my view, it is completely unethical to deliberately promote a diseased state in an animal. The birds’ obesity will lead to myriad other problems from skeletal disorders to difficulties in coping with heat stress, and all of which are accompanied by feelings of malaise."

It’s also no surprise that a new study identifies a potential human health risk associated with eating foie gras.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that foie gras consumption may trigger the development of a serious disease that can cause a multitude of human health problems, including extensive organ damage, kidney failure and even death.

Of course, most people probably don’t want to eat any part of a diseased animal, yet in the case of foie gras, it’s the diseased organ itself that diners consume.

More people are refusing to swallow foie gras and its inherent cruelty. Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the practice of force-feeding ducks and geese for foie gras should be banned, according to a Zogby poll. As a result, governments are looking at the issue and scores of restaurants are taking it off the menu.

Forcing animals to endure such extreme cruelty and disease for something as trivial as a high-priced snack is something no civilized society should support. Mere common decency requires us to treat animals mercifully, and little could be less merciful than foie gras production.

We’d all be wise to simply leave this product off our plates.

- Paul Shapiro is the senior director of the Humane Society of the United States’ fac-tory farming campaign.

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Several restaurants here in Sarasota still serve this death delicacy. Ask them to stop!