What’s at stake
Roughly half a million ducks are force-fed annually in U.S. foie gras production. The practice is documented cruelty: a 10-inch metal pipe pushed down the throat several times a day, until the liver swells to ten times its natural size. The bird’s body isn’t designed to handle this — and it doesn’t.
California banned production in 2004; the industry has spent two decades trying to reverse it and failed. New York City passed a sale ban in 2019, fought through several rounds of state and federal litigation, and the ban has held in its current form.
Foie gras is small relative to factory farming, but the politics are tractable. A clean ban builds coalition reps, develops legal expertise, and shows other animal-welfare fights what’s possible. We fund the people doing this work.
What we fund within this issue
- Ballot measures and city-council campaigns to ban production, sale, or both.
- Legal defense when the industry sues — and it always sues.
- Coalition staff at the state and city level who keep these campaigns alive between news cycles.
- Communications and earned-media work that makes the cruelty case in plain language.
- Research on enforcement — bans without enforcement don’t change anything.
Current focus
We’re backing local-ordinance work in cities where the political math is favorable, plus ongoing legal defense of bans already on the books. The next 18 months are consolidation more than new wins.