Photos: PETA Posts ‘D’ Rating—’D’ for ‘Diseased Duck Livers’—in Window of Per Se Restaurant for Serving Foie Gras

For Immediate Release:
March 6, 2014

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

On the heels of Per Se restaurant’s shocking “C” rating from the health department, PETA has posted a rating of its own smack-dab in the upscale Columbus Circle eatery’s window for all to see, but it has nothing to do with a lack of sanitary conditions. It has everything to do with the dirty business of force-feeding and tormenting ducks in order to produce the diseased duck livers used for foie gras, a vile product on Per Se’s menu. A PETA undercover investigation of upstate New York factory farm Hudson Valley Foie Gras revealed how workers shove steel tubes down ducks’ throats and pump huge amounts of grain into their bodies three times a day, every day, for weeks in order to sicken and enlarge their livers to up to 10 times their natural size. At slaughter, the ducks are hung upside down, have their throats cut, and are left to bleed to death.

“The main ingredient in every bite of Per Se’s foie gras is cruelty to animals,” says PETA Associate Director of Campaigns Lindsay Rajt. “The idea of force-feeding ducks by ramming steel tubes down their throats to produce diseased duck livers should leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth.”

Foie gras production is so cruel that it has been banned in Israel, Germany, and other European nations; its sale has been banned in California; and force-feeding birds is prohibited in the U.K. and Switzerland, where foie gras packages are required to carry labels to inform consumers that the birds were force-fed.

Photos of PETA’s Cruelty Certificate posted in Per Se’s window are available here.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.