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Pittsburgh City Council Local animal activists applauded Pittsburgh City Council for banning foie gras, a controversial delicacy produced by force-feeding ducks and geese until their livers become fatty and diseased. In what one Humane Action Pittsburgh press release describes as a "groundbreaking move toward animal welfare and ethical consumption," the City Council passed, by a vote of 7-2, a bill to "ban the production and sale of foie gras within city limits." Restrictions on foie gras have already been placed in numerous countries around the world, including Australia, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, as well as in various...

Foie gras is often part of a festive French meal, but the way it is made – force-feeding ducks or geese to fatten their livers – is making some people think twice before eating it. Alternatives are picking up steam.Sales of vegetarian or "faux" foie gras are on the rise in France, as people are looking to avoid force-fed birds, and as the delicacy is increasing in price because of a massive bird flu outbreak that has hit duck and bird farms and reduced supply. “Most of the people who came to buy some weren't even vegan or vegetarian,” says...

The sale of foie gras looks set to become illegal in New York City with city council members expected to pass a bill on Wednesday that bans the sale of the fattened liver of a duck or goose at restaurants and grocery stores. Under the bill, vendors and restaurateurs caught selling the French delicacy could be slapped with a $1000 fine and a year behind bars. Animal welfare advocates have long supported banning the sale of foie gras, claiming the practice of force-feeding a bird by sticking a tube down its throat is inhumane. However, farmers who produce the specialty...

No more foie gras in New York City because it’s cruel to force-feed ducks and geese to make their livers tastier? A bill introduced in the City Council by member Carlina Rivera, who represents lower Manhattan, would outlaw its sale, as The Post reported on Monday. But like many politically correct council brainstorms, it’s not really about humane treatment of animals. It’s a selective-outrage thumb in the eye, or the gullet, of the “rich.” Who eats foie gras except the rich? Many animals and sea creatures are brutalized before they’re brought to our tables. We ignore it because our lives...

Amazon has agreed not to sell foie gras in California from birds that have been force-fed and pay civil penalties as part of a lawsuit settlement, a prosecutor said Friday. The lawsuit filed by prosecutors in Los Angeles, Monterey and Santa Clara counties accused the giant retailer of violating a 2004 state law banning sales of the fatty duck and goose liver delicacy if it was produced by force-feeding birds. A judge approved the settlement on Thursday between Amazon and the three prosecutors, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said. Under the deal, Amazon agreed for the next five...

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who appeared on Fox & Friends Thursday morning, called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell an “upper-crust, bow-tie wearing, foie gras eating insider swamp monster.” Ainsley Earhardt first asked Bongino, an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, about former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s comments that the president may not be fit for office — a go-to source of outrage on the Friends this week. Bongino first dismissed Clapper’s comments, noting he lied under oath before the Senate in 2013, before excusing Trump’s behavior by explaining: “He’s a Queens guy.” “I’m a Queens...

Avian flu has achieved what animal rights protesters have spent years trying to do - halt the production of foie gras in France, as officials attempt to contain an epidemic of the virus.Breeders across 18 areas – or départements – in south-west France cannot send their ducks or geese for slaughter until at least August, France’s agriculture ministry said. The move is intended to help health officials to contain an epidemic of avian flu – H5N1 – spreading across farms in the area. But, it effectively means a halt to a significant amount of foie gras production in the country....

Vegan activists threatened a restaurant in the United Kingdom over its Valentine's Day menu A chef in the United Kingdom is backing away from including foie gras on a Valentine's Day menu after receiving death threats from vegan activists. The chef at Kings Arms at Fleggburgh opted out of serving the decadent dish during Valentine's Day dinner this weekend after being subjected to "harassment" by activists who threatened to protest the menu, the Guardian reports. Foie gras is traditionally made by force feeding geese until their liver becomes enlarged.

A federal judge on Wednesday overturned California’s law banning the sale of foie gras, a ban sparked largely by outrage over the farming practices of a Sonoma company, which some likened to animal torture. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson does not mean Sonoma Foie Gras can restart production in the state. But it will allow the reconstituted company to sell products brought in from outside California, according to company co-founder Junny Gonzalez. ________________________________ The judge ruled the law was unconstitutional because it interferes with an existing federal law that regulates poultry products. The courts last year...

The Supreme Court is allowing California to continue enforcing a law that bans the sale of foie gras. The justices on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the law from producers of the delicacy in New York and Canada. …

Yesterday the Do Or Dine owners—who introduced us to the controversial Foie Gras Doughnut not too long ago—came by our office for a little taste test. On the other side of the table: the Faux Gras Doughnuts, created by the Dun-Well vegan doughnut company, and filled with The Regal Vegan's Faux Gras. Despite having put out beer and knives for our guests, the meeting was cruelty-free—in fact, it was very amicable! (The Do or Dine gentleman even offered to fill the vegan doughnuts with their jelly.) Gothamist staff indulged in the treats, and here are some thoughts from those who...

Chicagoans can feast on foie gras once more. The Chicago City Council just repealed the ban on its sale that it put in place two years ago. Monica Davey, the Times’s Chicago bureau chief, says the ban has been a source of embarrassment for the city and the repeal comes as residents have accused officials of trying to micromanage people’s lives, with talk of prohibiting smoking even outside along the lakefront and eliminating transfats from restaurants. No other American city has prohibited foie gras’ sale, but California has passed a law banning it as of 2012.

CHICAGO - Five months after the city ordered restaurants to stop selling foie gras, it's liver and let liver in Chicago. While some fancy restaurants and gourmet shops no longer offer the goose or duck liver delicacy, others are flouting the ban, listing foie gras on their menus and, in one case, framing the city's warning letter. Evoking Chicago's Prohibition-era past, when a password could gain entry into a speakeasy, at least one restaurant is rumored to be serving foie gras to customers who ask for the "special lobster" dish. And one place has cleverly skirted the ban by offering...

Feathers are flying in the foie gras industry after a Spanish company scooped the industry’s top award for the Gallic delicacy. Patería de Sousa was awarded the Coup de Coeur by the Paris International Food Salon for innovation. Yet it is precisely its innovative techniques that have set French foie gras makers in a flutter. They claim that the Spanish version of the goose liver extract is not foie gras at all and have demanded the prize is withdrawn. Patería de Sousa prides itself on not fattening the bird’s liver by force-feeding, but instead the foie gras is made by...

Sometimes sincere people concerned with protecting innocent human life will express sentiments along these lines: "Animal rights advocates are eager to protect all kinds of animal life, but seem to ignore the most important animal of all, the human animal. Terrine of Foie Gras They are willing to save the whales, but abort the humans. Protecting animals can never be as important a task as protecting young humans from abortion, embryonic stem cell research or other forms of experimentation." Such a viewpoint, though fundamentally correct, should not be taken to signify that animal abuse in our society is an...

Let 'em eat foie gras, they declare Almost 4 months after ban, a number of restaurants appear to be dishing up the delicacy with impunity By Josh Noel Tribune staff reporter December 21, 2006 NOTE: This story contains corrected material, published Dec. 22, 2006. When the letter came from City Hall threatening punishment if he continued to serve foie gras at his North Side restaurant, Doug Sohn framed the warning and set it beside his cash register. And he kept serving the fattened duck liver without a care. "We displayed it proudly," said Sohn, owner of Hot Doug's, a gourmet...

Just in time for the High Holy Days, a pair of prominent Jewish leaders are putting the City Council's two Jewish aldermen on notice: They risk incurring the wrath of God if they push to repeal Chicago's foie gras ban. "Beyond the Kosher dietary laws, God has told us to do what is 'good and proper in the eyes of God,'" Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Sholom B'Nail Israel Congregation wrote to Aldermen Burton F. Natarus (42nd Ward) and Bernard Stone (50th Ward). Jana Kohl, former director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, accused Natarus and Stone of...

Chicago chef first foie gras offender CHICAGO, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- A Chicago chef is receiving national media attention for being the first caught selling newly-banned foie gras in his restaurant. The city Health Department received a 311 non-emergency report Saturday that the Block 44 was offering the pricy delicacy, three days after the city council banned it, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Chef Rick Spiros doesn't dispute the charge. "I had a couple pieces left over and I just got rid of it," he told the newspaper. He said it wasn't an act of defiance but an effort to avoid...

Photo Gallery: Chef Gaspard Caloz prepares foie gras(please enable pop-ups to see the gallery)Foie gras? Au revoir.    Pate? Passe.One day, restaurant patrons might hear just that if New Jersey lawmakers join a growing movement against the fatty prepared livers of ducks and geese, the stuff of epicures' dreams -- and animal advocates' nightmares -- for 5,000 years.  On Tuesday, Chicago began enforcing a ban on the dish. California is phasing it out by 2012, and similar laws have been under consideration in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Oregon. Even Philadelphia -- famously fond of the cholesterol-loaded cheese steak --...

CHICAGO, Aug. 22 — On Tuesday, this city’s lawbreakers were serving foie gras. The illicit substance could be spotted in places it was rarely seen when it was legal: buried in Chicago’s famed deep-dish pizza, in soul food on the South Side, beside beef downtown. In one of the more unlikely (and opulent) demonstrations of civil disobedience, a handful of restaurants here that never carry foie gras, the fattened livers of ducks and geese, featured it on the very day that Chicago became the first city in the nation to outlaw sale of the delicacy. “This ban is embarrassing Chicago,”...