On this day in vegan history · October 30, 2019
New York City Votes to Ban Foie Gras
The City Council outlawed selling the force-fed delicacy inside the country's biggest restaurant market, and the fight over it is still going.
The facts
- Date passed
- October 30, 2019
- Legislation
- Council Member Carlina Rivera's bill (Intro 1378)
- Fine
- Up to $2,000 per violation
- Effective date
- 2022 (delayed by litigation)
- Affected farms
- Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farm, Sullivan County, NY, about 350,000 birds a year combined
On October 30, 2019, the New York City Council passed a bill banning the sale of foie gras, the fattened liver produced by force-feeding ducks and geese through a tube. Sponsored by Council Member Carlina Rivera, the law set the ban to take effect in 2022 and carried fines of up to $2,000 per violation. It threatened the two farms that supply nearly all the foie gras sold in the city, Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farm, both in Sullivan County, which together raise about 350,000 birds a year for it. The farms sued, arguing the city was overstepping state agriculture law, and the ban has moved in and out of the courts ever since.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Birds used to produce foie gras suffer terribly and needlessly.
Stephen Wells, Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director, October 30, 2019
Source: Animal Legal Defense Fund
Why it still matters
It was one of the first times a major American city tried to legislate a specific factory-farming method off its menus rather than just off its own kitchens, and the farms' lawsuit turned it into a years-long test of how far a city can go to regulate cruelty produced outside its borders.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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