New York City Says More Like Foie Nah, Amirite?

Foie gras, while delicious, is inarguably terrible for the fowl from which it is made. Now, New York City has passed legislation that will ban its sale beginning in 2022.

According to the New York Times, the city is home to one of the country’s largest markets for foie gras. It’s a delicacy regularly enjoyed by some of the city’s worst people (you know who they are), but the way it’s made is gruesome:

Most foie gras is produced through a process known as gavage; ducks are force-fed a fatty corn-based mixture that engorges their livers. The process requires tubes to be inserted into a duck’s throat for a 20-day feeding regimen, swelling the liver to up to 10 times its normal size. The procedure can leave ducks too big to walk or even breathe before they are slaughtered, animal activists say.

New York isn’t the first place to ban foie gras—California passed similar legislation, and it’s also prohibited in India, Israel and Britain—but it New York’s bill bans the foie gras made from force-fed birds, though the fact that not all of it is made that way will make it difficult to enforce.

While chefs and farmers throughout the land are bemoaning the loss of foie gras, Carlina Rivera, a Manhattan councilwoman who sponsored the bill to eliminate it, thinks the complaints are being blown out of proportion.

“These farms produce dozens of other products and gavage is aggressively cruel,” Ms. Rivera said. “There is an exotic animal ban in New York City and people still go to the circus.”