On Wednesday evening, the New York City Council voted to ban the production and sale of foie gras, a goose or duck liver delicacy with a fierce manufacturing process that animal advocates are protesting against. More than 1000 restaurants will have to remove foie gras from the menu.

The ruling banning the production and sale of foie gras from 2022 was approved by 42 votes to just 6. New York Mayor Bill Blasio has already said he will sign the ordinance, after which it will become city law. The city council has imposed a $2,000 fine for selling foie gras made through forced feeding of birds.

To obtain foie gras (translated from French – “fat liver”) duck or goose immobilized for 20 days and forcibly fed through tubes. As a result, the liver of the bird increases by 10 times compared to the norm.

• The production and sale of foie gras is already banned in the UK, Israel and India. California was the first US state to ban delicacies, where the law was passed in 2004 and entered into force in 2012. In 1997, Whole Foods supermarket chain refused to sell foie gras, since 2018 it has been banned from sending Postmates delivery service.
• Foie gras is on the menu of nearly 1,000 restaurants in New York City, WRITES NYT. Their owners are outraged. “New York is a mecca of haute cuisine. How can there be no foie gras? What’s next? A ban on veal? Mushrooms?” the newspaper quoted the owner of the French restaurant Tocqueville in Union Square, Marco Moreira, as saying.
• The co-owner of one of the duck farms near New York, where 800 ducks a month are fed, estimated his proceeds from the sale of foie gras at $15 million per year. A second estimated the loss after California’s foie gras ban at $50,000 a month, calling the new law “devastating.”