In November, voters in Washington, DC, and Denver will cast their ballots to decide whether their cities’ restaurants and grocery stores can continue to sell one of the world’s more controversial foods: foie gras.
French for “fatty liver,” foie gras is made by briefly force-feeding ducks a corn slurry two to three times daily with a metal tube during the final two to three weeks of their lives. It can make their livers balloon to roughly six to 10 times their natural size.
The farming practice gives the liver its signature rich, buttery taste that made it a French delicacy centuries ago and ever since, a prized menu item at upscale restaurants, particularly in Europe, the United States, and East Asia. But the apparent cruelty of force-feeding ducks has also long made it the target of those concerned with animal welfare.
While forcing a lot of food through a metal tube into ducks’ throats may not look great, foie gras companies and high-end chefs contend that it doesn’t hurt the animals because — among other reasons — ducks’ unique physiology enables them to eat fish and other animals whole, and that they naturally gorge before migrations. (More on these arguments later).
Whenever the issue is up for a vote, it touches off fierce debates over animal welfare and fine dining. While foie gras production does harm animals, producers and chefs maintain the dish is unfairly singled out when there are arguably worse practices in animal agriculture, including many that impact a far greater number of animals. Banning a product largely consumed by the 1 percent might make some voters feel good, while ignoring the animal cruelty embedded in the production of vastly more common products, like chicken and eggs.
But to animal rights advocates, a potential ban in DC — which has more foie gras-serving restaurants than almost anywhere else in the US — represents a unique opportunity to hasten the end of what spokesperson Natalie Fulton of Pro-Animal DC, the group behind the DC ballot measure, calls a “uniquely cruel” practice.
What the science says about force-feeding ducks
Foie gras producers often argue that ducks can handle force-feeding just fine because of their long, flexible necks that allow them to swallow fish whole — spines and all — and that they’ve evolved to stuff themselves before seasonal migrations. Producers also commonly say that they have no gag reflex.
But these claims, according to research, don’t mean that force-feeding is painless. They also leave out a lot of the other problems in foie gras production. Last month, a veterinarian at Ghent University in Belgium and a team of animal welfare research consultants published a literature review in the journal Animals looking at how foie gras farming affects ducks.
For one, there’s a big difference between ducks swallowing fish and having a rigid metal tube inserted into their throat dozens of times. A duck’s throat and beak area are particularly sensitive, and repeated insertion can cause tissue damage and irritation and inflammation in their esophagus, according to the newly published research, which was funded by the Flemish government. And while wild waterfowl might gorge before migrations, the resulting liver enlargement in the wild doesn’t come anywhere near what it does on foie gras farms.
Beyond the arguments as to whether ducks can be humanely force-fed, there are plenty of other welfare concerns in foie gras production. Eating so much makes the ducks overweight, which makes it harder for them to move around. Liver enlargement increases their internal heat production, which can make ducks pant more, and an enlarged liver can put pressure on their air sacs, also making it harder to breathe.
“The available evidence indicates that force-feeding creates substantial risks of welfare compromise through repeated restraint and tube insertion, possible injuries to the upper digestive tract, progressive liver enlargement, altered hepatic [liver] function, increased metabolic heat load, and impaired mobility,” the researchers concluded.
Ducks raised for foie gras aren’t given access to water — like a pond or bathing trough — which in nature they use to clean themselves and forage. And the overwhelming majority of those reared in the US even lack access to the outdoors.
Despite some of the documented welfare concerns in foie gras farming, Jordan Ginor — a director at Hudson Valley Farms in upstate New York — told me that they’ve got “really good, clean, smiley, healthy ducks.” The company is one of the two main commercial foie gras producers in the US and raises hundreds of thousands of ducks for foie gras annually.
Ginor also said that the aforementioned literature review focuses on European foie gras production, where birds are typically force-fed larger meals, twice daily, over two weeks. But at Hudson Valleys Farms, he said, the process is slower: smaller meals, thrice daily, over three weeks. “The slow process, with significantly less food per meal, lessens any possibility of stress or negative impacts,” he said. (Though one could argue that more insertions over a longer period is worse for the ducks.)
Earlier this year, a photojournalist who took a public tour of Hudson Valley Farms documented — during the force-feeding phase — ducks confined in small pens with no bedding. In one part of the video, the ducks gather in the corner of the pen, seemingly in a fruitless attempt to escape force-feeding.
When I asked Ginor for a response to the video, he was dismissive of the investigations into his company. “We’re proud of what we do,” he said. “Anyone’s welcome to go in and see.” (To its credit, the company provides free public tours, which is highly unusual for large-scale meat producers.)
In previous investigations of the company, animal advocates alleged they documented ducks injured, lame, bloodied, heavily panting, overcrowded in large barns, and confined in small cages prior to slaughter.
The other main commercial US farm, La Belle Farm, also in upstate New York, did not respond to an interview request for this story. La Belle has received far less attention than Hudson Valley Farms, though a 2019 news story found that its housing and practices are similar to those of its counterpart.
Why single out foie gras?
Support for a foie gras ban neared 80 percent in a small 2023 poll of Washington, DC, residents, with similar support in a 2026 Denver poll.
“We’ve tried to diversify, given everything that’s been going on” with foie gras bans over the last 20-odd years, Ginor told me. But foie gras is still the core of Hudson Valley Farms’ business.
Ginor said his operation is more humane than a lot of other poultry farms, so why single out foie gras? “As soon as we start comparing how things work at other farms, we look much more favorably,” he told me.
He may have a point, though it’d be difficult to crunch the moral math and determine whether foie gras is much worse — or perhaps even not as bad — as the factory farming of America’s chickens, egg-laying hens, and turkeys. Around half of US egg-laying hens live in tiny cages, while turkeys and chickens raised for meat have been bred to grow so big and fast that they have difficulty walking. And they all outnumber foie gras ducks by many orders of magnitude.
I asked Fulton of Pro-Animal DC about singling out foie gras over other issues. “Just because some things are also bad doesn’t mean that foie gras production is good,” she told me. (Pro-Animal Future, its umbrella group, is also behind the Denver ballot measure.)
Much of the issue boils down to what’s politically possible. While there’s been some progress, it’s proven difficult and expensive for animal advocates to reform poultry farming in state legislatures. Foie gras, on the other hand, is sort of a low-hanging fruit; there isn’t a large lobby group behind the US industry, and since it’s a luxury product, most consumers won’t miss it.
And Denver and DC are just the latest in a string of fights over foie gras. Its sale has been banned in California, along with Portland, Oregon; Pittsburgh, and New York City, whose ban has been held up in court in recent years. Over the summer, Brazil banned the sale and production of foie gras, too, and around 20 other countries — mostly in Europe — prohibit its production. (Chicago’s 2006 ban was overturned two years later.)
“We have no money to fight the story,” Ginor said. “People want to attack the 1 percent luxury food.”
Bart Hutchins, head chef at Butterworth’s in Washington, DC, told me he doesn’t want his town to ban what he considers a “great culinary tradition.”
“It is a miracle that we discovered this and that we cultivated it and that we can eat it,” he told me. For his part, Hutchins would rather see animal rights activists work to improve farming conditions for animals farmed on a much larger scale, like chickens and pigs, rather than ban one niche ingredient.
But he may soon have to take foie gras off his menu. Pro-Animal Future is especially confident about DC voters’ support for the ban, which would be a blow to the small US foie gras industry. But another incremental step in advancing animal welfare — and the issue in the minds of more voters.