Today, Mercy
For Animals supporters converged in front of Amazon’s annual shareholders
meeting in Seattle, Washington, to protest the decision of CEO Jeff Bezos to
continue selling cruel foie gras—the diseased, fatty liver of force-fed ducks—on
the company’s website.

Wielding
signs and banners bearing heartbreaking images of ducks with pipes rammed down
their throats and the messages “Jeff Bezos: Please Protect Animals. Ban Foie
Gras and “Amazon Supports Animal Torture, activists urged Amazon—the world’s
largest online retailer—to immediately end the sale of foie gras on its
website. Inside the meeting, Bezos was grilled about the company’s stubborn
stance on this issue during the question and answer session.

The
company has been “reviewing the matter for three years, ever since an MFA undercover investigation revealed egregious cruelty at an Amazon foie gras supplier:
workers violently grabbing ducks by their delicate wings and necks and shoving metal
pipes down their throats to force-feed the birds, ducks hyperventilating from
their unnaturally large livers pressing against their lungs, and workers hastily shackling ducks upside down and slitting their throats while the birds were still fully conscious and able to feel pain.

Forcing a metal pipe down a duck’s throat and
cramming food into his stomach in order to produce a diseased, fatty liver is
so patently cruel the practice has been banned in more than a dozen countries,
and leading chefs and grocers, including Wolfgang
Puck, Whole Foods Market, Costco, Safeway, Giant Eagle, and Target, rightly refuse to sell it.

Amazon has the power and responsibility to ensure that
products sold on its website are not the result of blatant animal abuse. The
company has already banned the sale of foie gras on its U.K. website and has banned
other inherently cruel products on its U.S. website, including shark fins,
whale meat, bear bile, ivory, snake and crocodile skin, seal fur, and any part
of a dog or cat. It’s time Amazon banned the sale of
foie gras too.

Compassionate
consumers can help end the torture of ducks for foie gras by signing and
sharing our petition at AmazonCruelty.com.