PETA France Disrupts Chefs’ Awards

PETA France tried nicely asking the president of the Trophée des Hauts de France ceremony in Lille, France, not to serve foie gras, but he insisted on displaying the vile “torture in a tin.” That left PETA France no choice but to not-quite-so-nicely point out the cruelty involved in its production.

Earlier this year, PETA released a video narrated by Kate Winslet that contains undercover footage taken on French foie gras farms and shows ducks being confined to iron maiden–like cages, unable to stretch even one wing or take a single step in any direction. Such intense confinement is, of course, a violation of Council of Europe guidelines.

Here’s how one investigator described the conditions on one farm:

“It is absolutely astounding to enter a force-feeding room. Hundreds of ducks are lined up like shoeboxes. They are … jammed in cages that restrict freedom of movement. They are unable to stretch even the tip of a wing or to turn around. … [D]ucks are haggard, and some of them haven’t enough strength to raise their heads anymore. Metal cages, darkness, animals exhausted from struggling, corpses—you feel like you’re entering a torture chamber.”

PETA Germany has urged the European Commission to crack down on French foie gras farms that illegally confine birds to cages that restrict their movement. You can help by writing to the European Commission and asking it to enforce the 1999 guideline (Council Directive 98/58/EC):

John Dalli
Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy
European Commission
B-1049 Brussels
Belgium
[email protected]

Written by Alisa Mullins