{"id":941949,"date":"2019-09-30T13:36:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T20:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peta.org\/?post_type=feature&p=941949"},"modified":"2020-12-21T14:15:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T22:15:37","slug":"what-is-foie-gras","status":"publish","type":"feature","link":"https:\/\/www.peta.org\/features\/what-is-foie-gras\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trendiest Thing You Can Do With Foie Gras Is Give It a Hard Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard of foie gras<\/a> on cooking shows such as\u00a0Top Chef\u00a0<\/em>or seen it on a restaurant’s menu, but do you know what it is or how it’s made? Below, we’ll answer all your questions about this controversial food.<\/p>\n

What Is Foie Gras?<\/h2>\n

Foie gras<\/a> (French for “fatty liver”) is a p\u00e2t\u00e9 dish made of the enlarged, diseased livers of force-fed ducks and geese. Sometimes sold in high-end restaurants, it’s the result of shocking cruelty to birds. Although France is the primary producer (and consumer) of this grotesque “delicacy”\u2014producing more than 20,000 tons of it each year\u2014force-feeding also takes place on a few duck farms here in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Foie gras is unhealthy for humans. Eighty-five percent of its calories are from fat, and a 2-ounce serving contains 25 grams of fat and 85 milligrams of cholesterol.<\/p>\n

How Do Animals Suffer?<\/h2>\n

To make foie gras<\/a>, workers ram pipes down the throats of geese and male ducks multiple times each day, pumping pounds of grain and fat into their stomachs in a process known as “gavage.” This causes the birds’ livers to swell to up to 10 times their normal size. Many have difficulty standing because their abdomens become distended, and they may tear out their own feathers or attack each other out of stress.<\/p>\n\r\n\t\t

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