PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Animal Rights Activists Speak Out About Foie Gras
by Eric Jonas Tuesday, May. 18, 2004 at 10:34 AM
ejonas@andrew.cmu.edu

The Pittsburgh animal rights group Voices for Animal Liberation has been asking local restaurants to remove foie gras from their menus. Foie gras is made by force-feeding a duck or goose one third of his body weight every day by having a metal pipe forced down his throat.

Anti-foie gras picketers working with the local animal rights group Voices for Animal Liberation (VAL) have become a familiar site outside the South Craig Street restaurant Lucca in recent months. The activists are asking the restaurant to take the pricey appetizer off their menu because its production involves egregious cruelty to animals.

Foie gras is the fattened liver of a duck or goose who is force fed three times a day by having a metal pipe forced down his throat. The bird is forced to eat one-third of his body weight every day until he contracts the painful liver disease hepatic lipidosis. Right before he would die of this disease he is slaughtered, and the fattened, diseased liver is sold as the delicacy foie gras.

In addition to being force fed nearly to death, ducks and geese on foie gras farms are forced to endure intensive confinement, living in squalid cages or pens with little room to move, flap their wings, and are denied any access to water in which to swim, which is a necessary behavior for the well-being of ducks.

Calling foie gras production “one of the cruelest and most unnecessary abuses that animals face�, VAL activists have been working since January to make Pittsburgh foie gras-free. So far they have gotten two restaurants, Baum Vivant on Baum Boulevard, and the Carlton downtown, to take the dish off their menus, and are currently focusing on the Italian establishment Lucca.

The protesters can be seen at least twice per week outside the restaurant holding signs and passing out leaflets that ask concerned people to write or call Lucca, asking them to take foie gras off their menu permanently.

Lucca can be contacted at:

Steve Thompson, Chef
Joe Jordan, Owner
Lucca
317 S. Craig Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 682-3310

You can learn more about Voices for Animal Liberation’s Foie Gras-Free Pittsburgh campaign at http://www.pghfoiegras.com

www.pghfoiegras.com

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