Force-feeding ducks

June 22, 2012

Ducks do have a gag reflex and in fact sometimes vomit after being force-fed ("Chicago Redux? Four years after city repealed ban, California bidding adieu to foie gras," Dining, June 21). A report by the European Union's Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare states that "the oropharyngeal area is particularly sensitive and is physiologically adapted to perform a gag reflex to prevent fluids from entering the trachea. Force feeding will have to overcome this reflex and hence the birds may initially find this distressing and injury may result."

Moreover, mulards, the ducks commonly raised for foie gras, are dabbling ducks, not diving ducks. Dabbling ducks forage mainly on grasses, insects, and tiny fish and amphibians. They do not generally attempt to ingest large fish like diving ducks do.

And while some ducks naturally increase their food consumption before migration, mulards are not migratory. Even migratory ducks never gorge -- they eat frequent small meals. These birds are not designed to metabolize fat at a high rate, as evidenced by how quickly it metabolizes in the liver, thus causing force-fed birds to quickly develop life-threatening diseases, including fatty liver disease (which is what foie gras is -- a disease).

Poultry experts all over the world have condemned force-feeding, and it has been banned in more than a dozen countries, in addition to California. It is a shame Chicago didn't have the intestinal fortitude to uphold its ban on this atrocity.

-- Jodi Minion, wildlife biologist, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Norfolk, Va.