It’s been a busy few months for a duck named Olivia Gray. She and her human, Meghan Hill, have been traveling around D.C., trying to rally support for Initiative 86, also known as the Prohibiting the Force-Feeding of Birds Act.
“We’re out here trying to save her friends,” Hill said.
Foie gras, a controversial fatty liver dish, is made by using tubes or pipes to force-feed birds to make their livers bigger.
Initiative 86 would ban the dish in D.C. restaurants, with fines up to $5,000. Repeat offenders could even have their licenses suspended or revoked.
Meghan Hill
Meghan Hill
The group Pro-Animal DC has been leading the movement for a ban against foie gras, and their initiative just qualified last week for the midterm ballot. It will go before D.C. voters in November.
“We’re just trying to end the force-fed version of foie gras,” Hill said, adding: “And we’re trying to get people to understand how bad it is.”
One of the bill’s supporters is D.C. representative Oye Owolewa, who’s currently running for D.C. Council. He says he believes force-feeding birds is morally wrong.
“We’re thinking about their whole entire life’s existence as being living in pain and fear and what not,” Owolewa said. “And we feel like in D.C., we shouldn’t have that.”
But some chefs have come out against the bill.
“It’s been on my menus; it’s been something I’ve enjoyed eating,” said chef and restaurant consultant Ashish Alfred.
Alfred has cooked professionally in Paris and previously served foie gras at his restaurants in the DMV. He points out that ducks often eat whole fish or frogs anyway and says the force-feeding isn’t constant.
“It’s usually in just the last week or two and it’s a few seconds a day, a couple times a day, right before the duck is harvested, so this is not this duck’s life,” Alfred said.
“Think about commodity chicken and commodity pork,” Alfred said. “You cannot sit down to breakfast and have bacon and coffee and tell me that you’re worried about these geese or ducks.”
Foie gras is currently banned in California. New York City passed a similar ban in 2019, but it’s been held up in a lengthy court battle ever since.
