Foie Gras Cruelty
What is Foie Gras?
To some, foie gras is seen as an expensive ‘delicacy’;
it is a pate made from the enlarged liver of ducks and geese as a result of
force feeding. The aim of foie gras production is to increase the fat content
of the liver so dramatically that veterinarians consider it a disease, "hepatic
lipidosis." A duck's liver naturally weighs around 50 grams. However, to
qualify as foie gras, the industry's own regulations require ducks' livers to
weigh an absolute minimum of 300 grams.
The photo above shows the comparison between a healthy liver and the liver used to make foie gras.
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this cruel? Foie gras is produced by forcing a long metal pipe down the throats of male ducks and geese and force-feeding them massive amounts of grain, resulting in their livers swelling to up to 10 times their normal size. Two to three times a day, a worker grabs each bird, shoves a long, thick metal tube all the way down his throat, and an air pump shoots up to two pounds of corn mush into his oesophagus. The vast amounts of feed pumped down the ducks' throats causes enormous internal pressure, and the pipe sometimes punctures the oesophagus, causing many to die from choking on the blood that fills their lungs. Some birds literally burst, choke to death on their own vomit, or become so weak that they are unable to fend off rats from eating them alive. Other ducks die a slow, painful, and premature death by suffocation from inhalation of regurgitated feed. In fact, because
of the massive toll taken on the birds during the force-feeding process,
the average pre-slaughter mortality rate is up to twenty times higher
than on other duck factory farms, according to the European Union's Scientific
Report on the subject. |
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