* The feeding process is accomplished by the forcible passage of a large pipe jammed down the esophagus of each bird, three times per day for a four week period.

* Due to the rough passage of this tube which is plastic or metal and has no beveled or lubricated tip, the esophagus is severely traumatized; post mortem examinations reveal scarring and lacerations and even occasional rupture of the esophagus from excessive pressure.

* As you will note in the report from New York State’s wildlife pathologist, many birds actually expire in the force-feeding process from trauma and suffocation and choke.

* The livers become so grossly enlarged by fatty infiltration that the birds experience liver failure by 2 weeks out of a four week process; however, since they are force fed and are not eating naturally, the liver failure does not require their immediate euthanasia: rather, they continue to be force fed since their livers can continue to expand, even though the bird is essentially moribund (dying) for its fourth and final week on the feeding production line.

* Guillermo Gonzales, owner of the California company Sonoma Foie Gras, admitted in a televised interview in ’04 that the reason the birds were killed at 4 weeks is that they would die soon thereafter due to their diseased livers. (The sale and production of foie gras in California is outlawed after 2012 by a law passed in June 2004.)

* During this gross and unnatural expansion of their livers, the birds’ abdomens become so swollen that walking becomes difficult and they make pathetic attempts to escape humans by dragging themselves by their wings.

* Due to the enormous size of the livers (10-12 times normal size), the birds have no room for their air sacs to fill with oxygen, and therefore all birds in the last 10-14 days of production show respiratory distress with high, shallow agonal breathing patterns; this is analogous to feeling as if one is smothering for that entire length of time.

* Because they are in liver failure in the last 10-14 days of production, many birds exhibit a resulting neurological condition (hepatic encephalopathy) and yet will still be grabbed and force fed, even when semicomatose or exhibiting seizures or opisthotonos (an abnormal position of the head and spine due to brain damage).

* Every carcass that has been necropsied has shown evidence of infections from bacteria and fungi.

* Many birds have evidence of aspiration pneumonia, the inevitable result of being forced to accept a large volume of food which is aspirated into the lungs as the birds choke in an effort to swallow it all. Many carcasses have the food mixture spilling out of their mouths and nostrils, evidence that they died of choke and asphyxiation.

By Holly Cheever, DVM