We have great news for ducks and geese! After our 10-year campaign, luxury department store Fortnum & Mason has decided to stop selling cruelly-cooked foie gras.
While it took too long, we’re thrilled that the penny has finally dropped and Fortnum & Mason has joined an extensive list of iconic UK institutions that have rejected this tin canned torture.
Ten years of campaign
The campaign kicked off 10 years ago after meeting with then-CEO Beverly Aspinall, during which she refused to rid Fortnum & Mason’s shelves of the nasty product.
It included tens of thousands of letters, London Underground advertisements and countless colorful protests, including those in which a giant “goose” smashed a Fortnum & Mason Diamond Jubilee street party and a “crime scene” was set up around the perimeter of the building. a shop with the chalk outlines of dead geese.
PETA employees, including founder Ingrid Newkirk, were also “force-fed” at the entrance to the Queen’s grocery store, birder Bill Oddi played a cameo as “Santa” (with a bag of coal in hand), and one woman went further. to change your name to StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty.com in an attempt to spread the message.
Sir Roger Moore and Lady Vera Lynn were on our side
The campaign was supported by the late Sir Roger Moore and over a dozen other celebrities, including the late Dame Vera Lynn, Twiggy, Ricky Gervais, Ralph Fiennes, and politicians Zach Goldsmith, Caroline Lucas and Kerry McCarthy. The Duchess of Hamilton even publicly returned the Christmas present she received from Fortnum & Mason, stating in her letter, “As long as you [end foie gras sales]Sorry, I won’t be able to shop at Fortnum and Mason. “
Cruelty Unveiled
In 2012, we released eyewitness footage from the farms of several foie gras vendors Fortnum & Mason showing geese struggling to stand and even breathe as a result of force feeding.
What is foie gras and how is it prepared?
To produce foie gras, workers grab ducks and geese by the necks, stuff metal pipes into their throats, and pump huge amounts of grain and fat into their stomachs several times a day using a barbaric process known as “probing.”
Imagine being forced to eat 20 kilograms of pasta every day. This is the human equivalent of almost 2 kilograms of food that birds are usually forced to ingest every single day on these farms.
PETA revelations have shown that some birds are so severely injured from feeding tubes that they have holes in their necks.
The process is so brutal that the EU’s Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Welfare recommends “to stop forced feeding of ducks and geese, and this can best be achieved by banning the production, import, distribution and sale of foie gras”.
What can you do for birds
It is illegal to force-feed birds in the UK, and yet the sale of force-fed products is still perfectly legal here. Sign our petition urge the government to comply with UK animal welfare standards by banning the import and sale of foie gras: