Lifting of Foie Gras Ban Prompts Protest at San Francisco Restaurant

PETA Points Out That Legal or Not, Selling the Diseased Livers of Tortured Birds Is Cruel

For Immediate Release:
January 8, 2015

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

Brandishing graphic posters that reveal how birds are violently force-fed to produce foie gras, PETA members will protest outside One Market Restaurant, which already plans to start serving foie gras in the wake of the overturning of California’s foie gras ban. Other protesters will display posters emblazoned with an anti–foie gras cartoon released by a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist shortly before he was killed in the terrorist attack on the French magazine’s office.

When:   Thursday, January 8, 5:30 p.m.

Where:  One Market Restaurant, 1 Market St., San Francisco

“It takes a total lack of shame and empathy to crow about the chance to serve and sell the diseased liver of a tortured, force-fed bird,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “The main ingredient in every bite of foie gras is cruelty to animals, and PETA is calling on kind people everywhere to stay away from any restaurant that insists on serving this vile dish.”

As shown in video footage released by PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat … or abuse in any other way”—foie gras is produced by shoving steel pipes down ducks’ throats and pumping huge amounts of grain into their bodies several times a day, every day, for weeks in order to sicken and enlarge their livers. At slaughter, the ducks are hung upside down, have their throats slit, and are left to bleed to death. Investigations at foie gras farms have documented sick, dead, and dying birds—some with holes in their necks from pipe injuries.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.