Rebuttal: Ducks Deserve an Honest Debate About Foie Gras

A successful citywide campaign to remove foie gras (fattened duck or goose liver) from local restaurant menus is increasingly garnering attention. Earlier this week, Jacqueline Bonanno, the co-owner of Mizuna, the latest restaurant to stop serving foie gras, wrote about a New Year’s Eve protest that prompted the removal. As an observer of the foie gras campaign and news coverage of it, and as a lawyer who focuses on animal law and protesters’ rights, I am troubled by Ms. Bonanno’s op-ed. It both dismisses the suffering of ducks killed for foie gras and misrepresents what happened at the protest. The animals who die to become foie gras deserve an honest discussion about the factory farming practices that fatten and kill them.

The Mizuna protest was captured on video (unlike what ordinarily happens in animal agriculture, as the industry has fought against transparency with litigation and ag-gag laws). You can watch footage of the protest of about a dozen people here. And here. And here, and here and here. Contrary to Ms. Bonanno’s statements, only two protesters wore any face coverings. While a few protesters did briefly go inside the restaurant, they absolutely did not threaten guests. Rather, they attempted to give a speech about the cruelty of foie gras, for which they were pushed to the ground and kicked by Mizuna staff. Back outside, they held signs, chanted and used noisemakers, and wrote on the sidewalk with chalk. Nothing I have seen of the videos suggests lawlessness, violence or threats. Meanwhile, there is footage of Ms. Bonanno yelling derogatory slurs that would get someone kicked out of my law school class, and footage that appears to show her non-consensually kissing one of the protesters, which the protester himself has confirmed. Another protester reports that Bonanno pepper-sprayed him in the face. Following the protest, Mizuna dropped foie gras from its menu.

Overall, the protest looks like numerous peaceful, if loud, protests we’ve all seen over various causes. One can approve or disapprove of rowdy protests like this one, but at a time when politically motivated violence is on the rise, it is reckless and defamatory to call these protesters “terrorists.” (Disclosure: After watching the footage of the protest, a legal clinic I direct, the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, agreed to represent an activist who is wrongfully charged based on claims made by Bonanno.)

But the most disappointing thing about Bonanno’s piece is not her misrepresentations about the protest. It is her obfuscation and projection. The piece maligns the protesters as “bullies” and “terrorists” in order to distract attention from the violence inflicted upon the ducks that ended up on Mizuna’s plates — something she refers to as a “special treat.” Notice, Bonanno spends almost no time actually defending the production of foie gras. Even one of the videos she herself links to opens with a chef stating that foie gras production is “not the prettiest picture,” but that “the problem for us chefs [with not serving foie gras] is that it’s just so freakin’ delicious.”

The reality is that foie gras production involves the systematic torture of ducks; it is almost definitionally inhumane. The process of making foie gras begins with the insertion of a pipe into a bird’s throat, forcing food down their esophagus. Whatever one otherwise thinks about animal agriculture generally, this process of force feeding, known as "gavage," is inarguably painful and unnatural, and causes severe physical harm to the birds. They often suffer lacerations in their throats from the feeding. Their livers become painfully enlarged, up to ten times their normal size. In an academic publication, I have explained why the very process used to produce the foie gras sold by Ms. Bonanno on New Year’s Eve is arguably unlawful.

Moreover, Mizuna’s supplier — Hudson Valley Foie Gras, in upstate New York — has been identified by undercover investigators and animal-welfare experts as legally and morally abhorrent. But this is not a problem unique to Hudson Valley. This is why almost every EU member state, the UK, Türkiye, India and Australia have banned foie gras. Switzerland banned it back in the 1970s. Several other countries, such as Argentina, have effectively banned foie gras under a general animal-cruelty law. Here in the U.S., California and New York City have banned foie gras (though a New York court has struck down the NYC ban, in a lawsuit that some might describe as corporate bullying, brought by Hudson Valley Foie Gras). Some of these laws ban even the sale and import of the product. Ms. Bonanno may find it beneath her to debate whether foie gras is morally defensible, but large cities, huge U.S. states and entire countries have agreed that foie gras is simply too cruel to permit.

Prior to its success at Mizuna, the Duck Alliance, the organization leading the protests, persuaded six Denver restaurants to remove foie gras from their menus, primarily by way of dialogue with the restaurant owners. Over the past two years, the Duck Alliance has worked with over 100 restaurants around the country and the world to remove foie gras from menus. And the Duck Alliance reached out to Mizuna repeatedly to have a discussion. It was only when Ms. Bonanno refused to meet with the activists and stated that “it's always worth fighting bullies” — i.e., the activists — that they organized their New Year’s Eve protest. If anyone is being bullied, it is undoubtedly the ducks raised for foie gras.

Denverites are animal lovers, and I am disheartened that Ms. Bonanno’s op-ed deflects from the central moral and legal questions. I hope other Denver restaurants that still serve foie gras will be more open-minded, and that my fellow Denverites will insist that, when it comes to violence against the animals that end up on restaurant menus and plates, we have an honest discussion about what really happens to them. Is it defensible to do to a duck or a goose what we would prosecute as animal cruelty if it was done to a dog or a cat?

That is the question we should all be discussing.

Justin Marceau is a Brooks Institute Faculty Research Scholar of Animal Law and Policy at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.