Brazil’s Largest City Bans Foie Gras

Great news for ducks and geese comes out of Brazil this week, where Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, has banned the production and sale of foie gras.

Foie gras is French for “fatty liver and the so-called delicacy is produced by violently shoving a metal pipe down ducks’ throats and force-feeding them three times a day—a practice so cruel it has been banned in more than a dozen countries, including Argentina, Israel, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.

Laercio Benko, city councilor and author of the law, explains in a recent BBC News piece, “It does not benefit human health and to make it, the birds are submitted to a lot of suffering.

In 2013, an MFA undercover investigation at Hudson Valley Foie Gras, an Amazon foie gras supplier, revealed the systematic and intentional torture of ducks.


Hidden-camera footage shows workers callously grabbing and tossing ducks by their fragile wings into transport cages and birds with open, bleeding wounds left to suffer in tiny wire cages without proper veterinary care.

Ducks who are confined, cruelly force-fed, and violently slaughtered for foie gras are treated as mere production units. As our investigation reveals, their short lives are filled with terror and pain.

You can take a stand for birds tortured for foie gras by telling Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, to stop selling it. Sign our petition today: AmazonCruelty.com.