In 2004 a law was passed in California that would ban foie gras if the pate was made from force feeding the birds or obtained by a company that treated the birds that way. The effective date of law was delayed almost 8 years to allow producers the time to convert to a humane method of feeding the birds.
On the eve of July 1st 2012, the day the ban would become law, the litigation began, unsuccessfully, to seek to overturn it. Foie gras was off the menu. In 2015 the ban was defeated on the theory that it was preempted by federal law which would prohibit states from imposing “ingredient requirements” that differed from or added to the federal regulations. Foie gras has been on the menu again since then.
The United States Court of Appeals, finding no violation of federal law, has just reversed the lower court and reinstated the ban finding that there is no ingredient issue regarding the liver, but rather, the issue is how the birds are treated while they are alive!
This ruling will not take effect in order to allow the exhaustion of the appellate process, but it is certainly directionally correct!
Foie gras is already banned in other countries such as Argentina, Israel, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Italy, and Prince Charles has banned it from all his events. Let’s hope we can keep the momentum up….
