The foie gras industry has spent years trying to convince the world that cruelty can be luxury. But behind the white tablecloths and silver spoons, the image is cracking. Once a prized symbol of French cuisine, foie gras is now losing ground on every front. Production is falling, restaurants are cutting ties, and courts are increasingly siding with the public. What was once celebrated as indulgence is now becoming a liability.
The truth is simple: foie gras isn’t timeless. It is a relic from another era, and its decline has become impossible to ignore.
An Industry in Decline
Across Europe, where nearly 80 percent of the world’s foie gras is made, things are looking bleak. France, the largest producer, keeps losing ground. Bird flu outbreaks wiped out millions of ducks, and every “recovery” since has been weaker than the last.
Official figures tell part of the story. Between 2019 and 2023, output across the European Union fell by nearly a third. France, which once produced close to 19,000 tonnes annually, has not come close to those numbers in years. Producers keep hoping for a rebound, but their own trade journals admit that “winning back consumers” has become the real challenge.
Seasonal dependence has deepened the instability. In France, as much as 70 percent of foie gras is sold during the Christmas season, compressing demand into a few weeks of the year. The rest of the time, shelves sit still. That is not a picture of a thriving culinary tradition. It is a sign of an outdated delicacy kept alive by nostalgia.
Younger generations view the product differently. What their parents saw as luxury, they see as unnecessary cruelty. Chefs who once built reputations on foie gras are now quietly removing it from their menus, aware that diners increasingly associate it with animal suffering rather than sophistication.
Even in France, the spell is breaking
As the country’s “gastronomic identity,” foie gras is a title meant to insulate it from criticism. Yet even inside France, the conversation is changing.
In 2024, Le Monde reported that some foie gras factories were shutting down because there simply wasn’t enough demand to stay open. While vaccines helped farmers recover from bird flu, high prices and low enthusiasm continued. The government can hand out subsidies, but it can’t force people to keep buying something they no longer believe in.
The truth is, foie gras is losing its audience. Its defenders are getting older, and its customers fewer. The product now survives mostly on tradition and tourism, but those supports are crumbling. France can keep protecting foie gras on paper, but not in people’s hearts.
Beyond the U.S., production is illegal across much of Europe. Force-feeding is illegal across most of Europe, including Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Only five EU member states (France, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Belgium’s Wallonia region) still allow it. Israel outlawed the practice entirely in 2003 after its Supreme Court ruled that force-feeding violated national animal protection laws.
Restaurants and retailers keep dropping it
The market collapse is most visible on menus. In the UK, long-running campaigns have persuaded nearly every major luxury retailer to drop foie gras. Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason, Amazon UK, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, and House of Fraser all stopped selling it after years of public pressure. Many of those efforts were driven by organizations such as Animal Equality, Animal Justice Project, and the Duck Alliance, which coordinated protests and consumer actions that turned foie gras into a reputational risk.
In the United States, the shift is accelerating. Following over 200 protests staged in 28 US and Canadian cities, targeting 33 Omni locations as well as the company’s headquarters in Dallas organized by Duck Alliance and Animal Activism Collective, Omni Hotels (a company valued at over $3 billion) removed foie gras from all 50+ restaurants in its multi-state portfolio and committed to a foie-gras free policy. In 2024, Hai hospitality (an award winning hotel and restaurant chain based in Texas) also dropped foie gras after after a combination of protests, in-person disruptions, home demos, and a PETA petition that sent over 40,000 emails to the restaurant.
Even high-profile international events have faced scrutiny. Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Animal Equality France collected tens of thousands of signatures demanding foie gras be removed from VIP menus. The organizing committee refused, but the controversy exposed just how out of touch the practice now appears. A handful of dishes on a luxury table sparked a global conversation about animal cruelty.
The U.S. supply is tiny and propped up by courts
In the United States, the entire foie gras industry now fits into a handful of barns. Only three foie gras factory farms remain in operation, with Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farm producing the majority. Fewer than half a million ducks are slaughtered each year, a fraction of what is required to sustain even a niche luxury market.
A brief history of the U.S. anti-foie gras movement
1990’s
A PETA investigation at Hudson Valley Foie Gras in Upstate New York (then called Commonwealth Enterprises) in 1991 brought the ethics of foie gras into American public consciousness for the first time.
2000’s
Activists released undercover videos from farms in France, Israel, and the United States, revealing birds struggling to breathe, unable to stand, and dying from ruptured organs. The images shattered the industry’s narrative of “humane” production.
By 2003, more than a dozen countries had outlawed force-feeding birds. Two animal rights groups, In Defense of Animals and Animal Protection and Rescue League, sued a California foie gras farm. Per the San Francisco Chronicle: the lawsuit “accused Sonoma Foie Gras of violating state laws against cruelty toward animals by forcing its ducks to consume so much food that their livers enlarge to 12 times their normal size”.
Public opinion strongly sided with the activists: a 2004 Zogby poll found that 77% of U.S. adults believed force-feeding ducks and geese for foie gras should be banned.
In 2004, the California state legislature passed at the first foie gras ban in U.S. history (Senate Bill 1520) banning both force-feeding and the sale of products derived from it. It was set to take effect in July 2012 after its 7½-year phase-in period.
In Illinois, the state Senate’s Executive Committee took note and advanced a 2005 “Force Fed Birds Act” to outlaw force-feeding and foie gras sales (even though Illinois had no foie gras farms). Similar bills were introduced in Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon around that time. While those early legislative attempts outside California did not immediately become law, they built crucial momentum.
Chicago became the first U.S. city to ban foie gras in 2006 after a successful city council vote led by Chicago Alderman Joe Moore. Unfortunately, mayor Richard M. Daley openly mocked the foie gras ban as “the silliest law” the city council had ever passed. The powerful Illinois Restaurant Association (headed by a council member, Alderman Tom Tunney) mobilized to overturn the law. Chefs, feeling their autonomy threatened, staged acts of defiance: a few Chicago restaurateurs began offering “underground” foie gras or giving it away free (since the ban outlawed sales, not possession) to thumb their noses at the law. The restaurant lobby then fought back and got the law repealed in 2008 (of the 48 aldermen who had originally backed the ban, only 6 voted against repealing it) but it proved that cities could legislate on animal cruelty in dining.
In 2007, Wolfgang Puck – one of America’s most famous chefs – announced a sweeping animal welfare initiative in partnership with HSUS, which included eliminating foie gras from all of his restaurants and catering operations. That came after years of pressure campaigning by Farm Sanctuary. By the late 2000s, Costco, Target, Safeway, and other grocery retailers had stopped selling it.
In New York state (home to the country’s two largest foie gras farms), the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Farm Sanctuary, and others petitioned the state’s Department of Agriculture in 2006 to declare foie gras an “adulterated” (diseased) product unfit for sale, since force-feeding causes a pathological fatty liver
2010’s
California’s ban faced years of court battles, but it held strong. Each time the foie gras lobby tried to overturn it, judges upheld the law and sided with compassion. The victory showed that animal-protection laws can survive even the fiercest industry pressure. And the ripple effect spread far beyond California.
As California’s foie gras ban was close to taking effect, over 100 high-end chefs signed an open petition in 2012 protesting the California ban and even proposing “humane” foie gras standards as an alternative. Many restaurants held lavish “farewell to foie gras” dinners that spring, attempting to sell as much of the delicacy as possible before the law kicked in. Some chefs frankly admitted they planned to ignore the ban or find loopholes.
In 2013, Mercy For Animals (MFA) released a shocking undercover video from inside Hudson Valley Foie Gras. The MFA investigation also revealed fully conscious ducks being shackled upside-down for slaughter with throats cut, and dead ducks thrown into trash bins like garbageprnewswire.com. The fallout was significant: MFA targeted Amazon, noting that Hudson Valley Foie Gras was a supplier to the online retail giant’s fresh grocery offeringsprnewswire.comprnewswire.com. MFA’s campaign – which included the video and a call to action at AmazonCruelty.com – urged Amazon to stop selling foie gras, comparing it to other unethical products Amazon had removed (like shark fins and animal-fighting videos)
In 2019, Voters for Animal Rights built a coalition that included organizations like Farm Sanctuary, the ASPCA, the Humane Society, and led a successful campaign to ban foie gras sales in New York City. After rallies, petition drives, and even support from some NYC council members who visited foie gras farms, the NYC Council drafted legislation (Intro 1378). In October 2019, the New York City Council voted overwhelmingly – 42–6 – to ban the sale of foie gras in restaurants and grocery stores in all five boroughs, with the ban to take effect in 2022.
The industry responded not with reform, but with lawsuits. In 2024, a state court overturned the ban, not because it disagreed with the cruelty argument, but because it ruled the matter was a state issue rather than a city one. The decision revealed the industry’s strategy: avoid public debate and rely on legal loopholes to keep selling foie gras.
Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farms filed suits arguing that NYC’s law was unconstitutional and that only the state could regulate poultry products. In a parallel move, lobbyists persuaded the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets to intervene. In 2022, that state agency issued a memo claiming NYC’s ban conflicted with state agriculture law, effectively siding with the producers and setting the stage for the courts to weigh in. Sure enough, in December 2022 a New York State judge put a hold on NYC’s foie gras ban, and in early 2024 the New York State Supreme Court (which in New York is a trial-level court) overturned the NYC foie gras ban on the grounds that municipalities cannot override state authority on agricultural issues.
2020’s
Advocates adopted a dual approach: city ordinances and corporate pressure. Duck Alliance formed and began targeting restaurants, hotels, and event caterers. Through a mix of protests, petitions, and shareholder advocacy, they made foie gras synonymous with public backlash.
Recent years have delivered major wins. In 2023, the city of Pittsburgh banned foie gras thanks to the work of Humane Action Pennsylvania. Despite opposition from a few restaurant owners, the Pittsburgh City Council voted 7–2 in April 2023 to ban the sale and production of foie gras within city limits. In 2025, Brookline, Massachusetts, followed suit, becoming the first jurisdiction in New England to do so. Brookline’s ban was initiated by two local high school students who led the Brookline High School Warriors for Animal Rights club. They gathered petition signatures and built a coalition including several animal nonprofits to put the issue before the Town Meeting. Despite some pushback from a few local businesses and the Chamber of Commerce, the ban passed with 114 votes in favor to 79 against
Other cities, including Philadelphia, are now considering similar measures. Each of these victories proves that public compassion, once mobilized, is stronger than tradition.
Why foie gras is losing cultural legitimacy
The reputational risk outweighs any culinary reward: Restaurants gain little revenue from a small appetizer that sparks protests, petitions, vandalism risk, and negative press. Removing foie gras is easy, and it earns goodwill. That is why you see luxury retailers and Michelin-starred chefs phasing it out.
Public opinion keeps hardening against force-feeding: According to a YouGov poll, commissioned in June 2023 by Animal Equality, nearly nine in ten Brits are in favour of a ban on the importation of foie gras made by force-feeding (86%, excluding the ‘don’t know’ responses). Most people can agree that force-feeding is inhumane treatment.
The industry is fragile: A product that relies on a few regions, a short selling season, and a handful of producers. A single outbreak or legal ruling can cripple supply. Add to that a cultural shift away from animal exploitation, and the foundations of the industry begin to collapse.
Tradition does not justify suffering. Societies evolve, and the most enduring customs are those that adapt to new moral standards.
Where the foie gras movement goes next
After two decades of progress, the challenge now is implementation. Lasting change will come from targeted laws, market leverage, and continued public awareness that keeps the issue visible and politically relevant.
Keep passing strong local laws
California’s model proved that well-crafted legislation can withstand years of lawsuits. The next wave will come city by city. Pro-Animal Future’s chapters in Denver, Portland, and Washington, D.C., are working to pass citywide ordinances to prohibit the sale of force-fed foie gras. We hope that these initiatives will set the stage for broader national reform.
Focus on Achilles’ heelS
Only a small number of producers and prestige buyers sustain foie gras’s public image. By focusing campaigns on high-visibility restaurants and retailers, advocates can dismantle the illusion of luxury. Over the past two years, more than 100 U.S. venues have removed foie gras entirely, thanks to targeted campaigns and persistent outreach. Due to the recent wins, pressure campaigns targeting businesses that sell foie gras will likely become more widespread.
Keep telling the truth, again and again
While many Americans already know about how foie gras is made, there are sill many who don’t. That’s why a core element of our ballot initiative campaigns is outreach and education. Every conversation at a farmers market, every petition signature, every commercial, every poster, and every city council testimony moves us closer to a world where foie gras disappears for good.
Build momentum towards bigger wins
Foie gras is a weak link in factory farming. It has low public support, it is a clear example of unnecessary suffering, and opposing it crosses ideological lines. Banning foie gras opens the door to deeper discussions about broader food reform.
The movement that made the collapse possible
The progress our movement has made to end cruel force-feeding did not happen by accident. It is the result of:
- Investigators who exposed what the industry worked so hard to hide.
- Local organizers who turned outrage into ordinances.
- Retail campaigns that targeted prestigious brands and made managers pick a side.
- Strategic litigation by both sides, which, in key jurisdictions, left humane laws standing.
- Persistent, creative protests that kept the story in the news and reminded chefs and luxury buyers that diners have changed. From London to Denver to Houston, activists have made foie gras a public-relations liability that few businesses want.
Here’s 3 ways you can take action today to help Pro-Animal Future end foie gras.
- Sign our online petition to ask elected officials in 3 major U.S. cities to end the sale of foie gras.
- Sign up to volunteer for our foie gras campaigns (in person, or remotely).
- Donate to support our 2026 initiatives to ban foie gras.
Pro-Animal Future is a grassroots political movement working to evolve beyond factory farming through local political action. [Learn more about us →]