Here’s the Rest of Your Foie Gras

The limp, blood-spattered corpse of a dead goose serves as an upsetting reminder of where foie gras really comes from. Those who purchase the repugnant pâté from Fortnum & Mason – one of the few British retailers that still sells it – would perhaps rather not think about the force-feeding and animal abuse that are its chief ingredients, but today, PETA volunteers felt duty-bound to give them a little aide-mémoire.

The glamorous ladies made for an incongruous sight as they rocked up outside Fortnum & Mason’s Piccadilly store in little black dresses, holding up the gory “dead birds”* alongside signs reading, “Force-Fed and Massacred for Foie Gras”. Fortnum & Mason has to get its foie gras from France because it’s illegal to produce the foodstuff in the UK because of the cruelty involved in the process.

As our undercover video footage of the company’s supplier’s farm shows, geese shrink away with terror as workers grab them by the neck and shove metal pipes down their throats in order to pump huge amounts of grain into their stomachs for foie gras. The birds are forced to swallow up to 4 pounds of grain and fat every single day – the equivalent of us being made to eat a staggering 20 kilograms of pasta a day. As a result, their livers can swell up to 10 times their normal size, causing the animals intense pain and distress.

It’s time for Fortnum & Mason to stop profiting from this torture. Its claims to represent “British quality” ring hollow, given its sale of this outrageously cruel foreign product. Our campaign against foie gras is gaining momentum, and our numbers are growing. Please join us at StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty.com.

*not actual dead geese – we used uncannily realistic replicas.