‘Force-Fed’ Woman Outside Fortnum & Mason Urges Grocer To Stuff Foie Gras

For Immediate Release:
27 January 2011

Contact:
Sandra Smiley +44 (0)207 357 9229, ext 229; [email protected]

London – Today, lying with her head in a pile of food, an elegantly dressed woman sitting at a dining table outside Fortnum & Mason illustrated the cruelty of foie gras production. Other PETA members held signs that read, “Fortnum & Mason, Drop Cruel Foie Gras”. The action was the latest salvo in PETA’s campaign to persuade Fortnum & Mason to follow the lead of Harvey Nichols and Selfridges, which have stopped selling foie gras under pressure from PETA.

“The vast majority of the British public want foie gras sales banned”, says PETA Special Projects Coordinator Abi Izzard. “It’s time for Fortnum & Mason to join other upmarket retailers and stop selling a product that causes birds agonising pain, mutilation, illness and death.”
           
In foie gras production – which has been banned in the UK and more than a dozen other countries – young ducks (most just a few weeks old) are crammed into tiny cages barely larger than their own bodies. Up to 2 kilograms of grain and fat are pumped through pipes into the birds’ stomachs each day. In human terms, that would be the equivalent of being forced to eat roughly 20 kilograms of pasta. Investigations on foie gras farms have documented sick, dead and dying birds, some with holes in their necks from pipe injuries. Sir Roger Moore and The Duchess of Hamilton have both written to Fortnum & Mason in support of the campaign to get the department store to stop selling foie gras. Moore and PETA also recently placed an ad in Piccadilly Circus Underground Station urging the store to pull the cruel product from its shelves.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has removed foie gras from the menu at its 195 Piccadilly restaurant and at all its events, and the Brit Awards did the same after complaints from both PETA and singer Leona Lewis. Prince Charles has banned foie gras from all menus at Royal residences.

More images are available from EPA. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.