Foie Gras

Please note: Although I have modified it somewhat, the original letter is from an unknown source; I only know that it was a sample included in another foie gras alert.

To Whom It Concerns,

I am disturbed to learn that your establishment sells foie gras, the production of which inflicts incredible suffering and cruelty upon sentient animals. As such, I respectfully request you take immediate steps to eliminate foie gras from your product list.

Foie gras, French for “fatty liver,” is made from the grotesquely enlarged livers of male ducks and geese. The birds are kept in tiny wire cages or packed into sheds. Pipes are repeatedly shoved down the birds’ throats, and up to 4 pounds of grain and fat are pumped into their stomachs two or three times every day. The pipes puncture many birds’ throats, sometimes causing the animals to bleed to death. This cruel procedure causes the birds’ livers to become diseased and swell to up to 10 times their normal size. Many birds become too sick to stand up. The birds who survive the force-feeding are killed, and their livers are sold for foie gras.

Globally, people have spoken out against the cruelty of foie gras. In 2004, California passed a law banning the sale and production of foie gras, effective in 2012. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI denounced force-feeding as being in violation of Biblical principles, and foie gras production has been outlawed in the U.K., Germany, the Czech Republic, Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, and Israel.

As such, I respectfully request you please reconsider and make the compassionate and ethical decision to ban foie gras. You may be interested to know in addition to those people and places indicated above, many regional chefs and colleagues have recently removed foie gras from their menus, and I would love to inform my friends and acquaintances that you have joined them by also rejecting this torture and eliminating foie gras. Until such a time, however, I maintain the only ethical decision is to promote a boycott of your establishment and visiting instead the ones that have removed foie gras already.

I look forward to a positive response, however, so that I may visit your establishment again.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent issue.

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