Animal Rescue Group Plans Foie Gras Counter Protest

While diners indulge on dishes like foie gras tortellini tonight, protestors with the Animal Protection and Rescue League may instill at least a tinge of guilt.

The upscale Santa Monica restaurant , serving up the delicacy and raising funds for their effort to replace an imminent statewide ban on the fattened duck liver with humane farming practices, such as hand-feeding of birds, cage-free farms and limits on fattening.

But Amber Coon, an investigator with the league who's helping plan a counter-protest tonight, says there's no humane method of raising birds for foie gras—they are reportedly force-fed up to 4 pounds of grain and fat daily. 

"Melisse has gotten our attention," Coon said. "We will be there to show the ducks point of view."

Melisse chef Josiah Citrin has been serving a five-course, all-foie gras menu nightly until the ban goes into effect on July 1. Tonight's special event will be a one-night "battle" with top chefs in Northern California who also oppose the ban.

Coon expects about 20 demonstrators tonight as part of a larger effort by the league to educate Californians about the way the birds are treated. A New York resident, she said she will be on the West Coast for a month to stage demonstrations and educational events similar to tonight's.

The state's ban on foie gras was approved in 2004, but its implementation was delayed for more than seven years. Former Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, authored the ban and said the delay was intended to give the industry time to develop alternative, more humane methods of creating foie gras.

"Unfortunately, producers have not used those years to develop an alternative production method and instead continue to use the same cruel force- feeding, which means that the wait is over and, come July, the production and sale of foie gras from force-fed animals will be prohibited," Burton wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece last month. "At least I hope they will be."

Burton wrote that more than 100 restaurants in the state have dropped foie gras from their menus, and retailers such as Costco and Target will not carry it. Kennedy said that when the law was passed, Burton said it would include state funding for research into foie gras production, but the funding never materialized.

— City News Service contributed to this report.