Senate Committee to Hold Public Hearing on Notorious Factory Farming Abuse

The Maryland State Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing today on S.B. 599, which prohibits the force-feeding of birds for the production of foie gras and the sale of foie gras produced by force-feeding.

Paul Shapiro, senior director of The Humane Society of the United States' factory farming campaign, will testify before the committee and urge it to quickly pass the bill.

Shapiro states, "The Humane Society of the United States urges the committee to pass this much-needed bill. Not only is force-feeding birds for foie gras production inherently cruel, but it's simply out of step with the moral sensibilities of most Americans."

Sen. Joan Carter Conway (D, 43) introduced S.B. 599, which has 12 cosponsors.

A similar Maryland House bill, H.B. 1137, prohibits the production and sale of foie gras. Introduced by Del. Tanya Thornton Shewell (R, 5A), H.B. 1137 has 40 cosponsors.

Facts:

• Factory farms produce foie gras—French for "fatty liver." For weeks, birds are force-fed an unnatural amount of food through a pipe thrust down their throats until their livers become fattened and diseased. Force-feeding can cause painful bruising, lacerations, sores, and organ rupture. The birds' livers can enlarge more than ten times the normal size, making it difficult for the animals to move or breathe. Often, the birds are crammed into filthy warehouses.
• Chicago, California, and more than a dozen countries—including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland—have taken legislative action on the issue of foie gras and cruel force-feeding practices.
• A 2004 Zogby poll showed that 77 percent of Americans believe the practice of force-feeding ducks and geese for foie gras should be banned.
• Pope Benedict XVI has condemned foie gras production, stating, "We cannot just do whatever we want with them….Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible…this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible."
• A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that foie gras consumption may pose health risks to a significant portion of foie gras consumers.

Timeline:

• November 2007—The HSUS and other organizations file a legal petition asking the USDA to declare foie gras a diseased product unfit for human consumption.
• March 2007—Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announces that he will no longer use foie gras.
• November 2006—The HSUS and other organizations file suit against New York State to prohibit the production and sale of foie gras as an adulterated food product.
• April 2006—The Chicago City Council overwhelmingly passes an ordinance by a vote of 48-1 banning the sale of foie gras within the city, effective August 2006.
• August 2004—California bans the production and sale of foie gras, effective 2012.

For more information on foie gras production, visit The HSUS' website (http://www.hsus.org/farm/camp/ffa/foie_gras.html).

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