Serving Foie Gras Still A Foul: Orange County Woman Sues For Ban

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Five California restaurants are the target of a new lawsuit to stop the sale of Foie Gras, the delicacy made from the livers of force-fed ducks. An Orange County plaintiff for the San Diego-based Animal Protection and Rescue League has filed the suits.

Gigi's, a new North Hollywood restaurant, is the latest in California that the League says it has caused to comply with the ban by filing lawsuits in 2020. The others named in the suit were French Laundry in Napa, most famously visited by Gov. Gavin Newsom over the weekend, as well as Petrossian and Monsieur Marcel in Los Angeles, and Kettner Exchange in San Diego.

California's official ban on foie gras manufacture and sale began July 1, 2012, with a law known as SB 1520 though it was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004. However, a federal judge ruled in July that the expensive dish was legal, so long as the seller was outside California and a third-party brought the food into the state.

Over the summer, Los Angeles County U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled in August that the sale of foie gras does not violate the law if the seller originates outside of California. The product is brought into the state by a third-party delivery service.

A Napa Valley chef at La Toque's Frank described that decision to the Napa Valley Register as a "Bastille Day ruling" and "a welcome step forward in restoring the freedom to decide what you want to eat in California."

Though considered a delicacy among epicureans, the method of making Foie Gras remains disconcerting to animal rights activists, according to the suit.

"There is nothing natural about inserting a half-inch diameter, one- foot long metal pipe down a duck's esophagus and pumping up to a pound of corn mash in, two to three times per day, for up to 30 days, until the ducks are on the verge of death from organ rupture and have a distended liver that is over 12 times normal size," the lawsuit stated. "APRL has repeatedly documented and exposed exactly this horror ..."

Hudson Valley Foie Gras is the only producer of foie gras in the United States and operates in a sparsely populated county in upstate New York, according to the Rescue League.

In 2015, HVFG convinced the local district attorney to prosecute and jail an APRL volunteer who documented and exposed alleged cruelty at the farm.

New York City last year banned Hudson Valley Foie Gras' products, as California has done.

City News Service, Patch Editor Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.