How Scientists Failed to Make a “Cruelty-Free” Foie Gras

Headlines claim scientists have created “cruelty-free” foie gras—but it’s an embarrassing faux pas. Find out why a better name for the product might be “marginally less cruel” dead duck’s liver, and learn what you should eat instead.

What Is Foie Gras?

Foie gras is a French food made from the grotesquely enlarged livers of male ducks and geese who workers force-feed through pipes rammed down the birds’ throats to deliver pounds of grain and fat directly into their stomachs. Force-feeding causes the birds’ livers to swell up to 10 times their standard size. Many birds have difficulty standing because their engorged livers distend their abdomens, and they may tear out their own feathers and attack each other out of stress.

How Scientists Failed to Make a “Cruelty-Free” Foie Gras

Instead of force-feeding ducks until their livers swell with disease (how the foie gras industry makes it), the new method involves scientists taking already slaughtered ducks’ livers and treating the organ with enzymes to mimic foie gras’ taste and texture. Is it less cruel than force-feeding? Sure, but it’s still made from ducks who were factory-farmed and killed just like any other animal-flesh product. Slightly less cruelty is still cruelty.

Suffering Ducks Is Business-as-Usual in the Farming Industry

Foie gras—whether workers steal livers from force-fed, diseased ducks or not—causes suffering. Culver Duck Farm kills approximately 6.5 million ducks annually, 25% of all ducks slaughtered in the U.S. industry. Does this look “cruelty-free”?

According to a disturbing whistleblower report:

• Sick and injured ducks were left bloody and swollen on often wet bedding without medical treatment.
• Ducks were buried alive by grain that poured from a pipe, suffocating some.
• Workers tossed ducklings deemed “unprofitable” by the industry into a grinder while the baby birds were still chirping.
• Some ducks appeared conscious while workers cut their throats. Federal law doesn’t require that workers stun birds before killing them, and some slaughterhouses’ “stun baths” only paralyze birds instead of making them unconscious.

All this followed a PETA undercover investigation of Culver, which revealed workers repeatedly slamming ducks against a wall and other hard surfaces, wringing their necks by spinning them around by the head, and even ripping a duckling’s head off.

Can You Get Cruelty-Free Foie Gras?

The only way to eat “cruelty-free” foie gras is by choosing a vegan option. Thankfully, vegan foie gras is easy. Using nuts and mushrooms—which have similar umami flavor profiles—you can make a vegan version yourself or purchase vegan foie gras from brands like Prime Roots.

Ducks are outgoing, social beings who—like all animals—deserve compassion and respect. When able to express their natural behaviors, ducks sleep together at night, and flocks reportedly develop regional accents, just as humans do.

Foie gras—and anything made from the body parts of animals—is built on exploitation, suffering, and death. Going vegan is the best way to help ducks and all animals exploited for their bodies.