Sacramento, CA - Demonstrating he truly cares about the welfare of animals, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed SB 1520 into law, a bill that bans the force feeding of ducks and geese in the production of foie gras. The bill also bans the sale of the product when made from force fed birds, both provisions taking effect in California in the year 2012.
The bill was supported by more than a dozen top celebrities including Martin Sheen, Sir Paul McCartney, Kim Basinger, Alicia Silverstone and Mary Tyler Moore. It also was supported by a broad coalition of animal protection groups, including the sponsors: the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, Farm Sanctuary, Los Angeles Lawyers for Animals and Viva!USA.
Foie Gras is a french delicacy created by the abnormally enlarged livers of ducks and geese. In modern foie gras factory farms, geese and ducks are confined, usually in either small pens or in tiny cages that virtually lock the birds in place. Thus restrained, the birds cannot escape the "feeder" and the mechanized feeding machine. One by one, the feeder grabs each bird and plunges the metal pipe of the feeding machine down their throats. The machine then pumps a huge amount of a corn-and-oil mixture (equivalent, for a human, to 11 pounds of food) directly into their gullets in just a few seconds.
This brutal treatment is devastating to the health of the birds. In a matter of weeks, their livers have swollen up to ten times their normal size. Breathing and walking become difficult as the liver pushes against other organs and forces the legs to move outward at an unnatural angle. Ducks at foie gras farms have been observed panting and struggling to stand, using their wings to push themselves forward when their crippled legs can no longer support them.
In this compromised state, depressed birds can no longer engage in normal preening behaviors, and this is compounded by the fact that they are denied access to water sufficient for them to engage in normal, instinctual behaviors. Their plumage becomes encrusted with filth, and most of them develop what foie gras farmers call "wet neck"-when their unpreened feathers curl up and become coated with dirt and oil.
They also suffer, as do all factory-farmed ducks, from debilling, which is performed ostensibly to prevent them from pecking each other when they are so severely confined. Shortly after birth, a hot knife sears off the tips of their sensitive upper bills, slicing through tissue rich in nerve endings. Debilled poultry suffer from chronic pain for the rest of their lives, often having trouble eating and preening.
Not surprisingly, the mortality rate on foie gras farms can be up to 20 times higher than the death rate on conventional duck farms. Ducks can die when the metal feeding tube punctures their necks, or when their stomachs literally "burst" from the enormous volume of food they are forced to ingest. Necropsies performed on foie gras birds have shown them to suffer from grossly enlarged livers, lacerated tracheas and esophagi, throats and gullets impacted with undigested corn, and massive internal bacterial and fungal growth.
The signing of this bill is a major win for pet duck/goose owners, as it gives Foie Gras factories located in California seven years to either "prove" that it causes no pain to the birds, or be shut down for good.
Photos of this disgusting practice:
http://www.nofoiegras.org/gallery/tube.jpg
http://www.nofoiegras.org/gallery/brokenbill.jpg
http://www.nofoiegras.org/gallery/machine.jpg
http://www.nofoiegras.org/gallery/sick.jpg
http://www.nofoiegras.org/gallery/dead07.jpg
For more information, please visit www.nofoiegras.org
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