Foie gras is banned in several places around the world because of how it’s made. Producing it requires force-feeding ducks or geese until their livers swell to many times their normal size, a process that animal welfare experts widely consider inhumane. The bans target this production method specifically, and the legal and political battles surrounding them have played out for decades.
How Foie Gras Is Produced
Foie gras, which translates to “fatty liver” in French, is made by deliberately enlarging the liver of a duck or goose through a process called gavage. Each bird is individually restrained twice a day while a stainless steel tube is inserted down its esophagus. A slurry of food, typically a corn-based mixture, is then pumped directly into the bird’s crop.
The feeding volumes escalate rapidly. At the start of the process, each duck receives roughly 470 grams of slurry per day. By day 12, that figure quadruples to about 1,880 grams per day. For context, that final daily volume is equivalent to roughly four pounds of food pumped into a bird that weighs only a few kilograms. The result is a liver engorged with fat, sometimes expanding to ten times its natural size. This is the product sold as foie gras.
The Animal Welfare Case Against It
The welfare concerns aren’t speculative. The American Veterinary Medical Association has documented specific risks associated with foie gras production: potential injury from repeated insertion of a long feeding tube, with the possibility of secondary infection; distress from the restraint and physical manipulation involved in force-feeding; compromised health from obesity, including impaired movement and lethargy; and creation of a physically vulnerable animal more likely to suffer from otherwise tolerable conditions like heat and transport stress.
Mortality rates during the force-feeding period run between 2% and 5%, according to figures from France’s Technical Institute of Poultry Farming. That means for every hundred birds entering the gavage process, two to five die before they even reach slaughter. Observations by the European Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Welfare also note that fattened ducks show abnormalities in how they stand and walk, suggesting the rapid weight gain causes musculoskeletal problems.
These findings form the core argument behind every ban: the product cannot exist without a production method that causes significant suffering.
Where Foie Gras Is Banned
More than a dozen countries have banned the production of foie gras, primarily across Europe. The European Union’s standing committee on animal welfare concluded that force-feeding is detrimental to bird welfare, which led many EU member states to prohibit the practice. Countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Finland, the Czech Republic, Poland, and others have all banned production. India and Israel have also prohibited it.
Notably, most of these bans target production rather than sales or imports. You can still buy foie gras in many countries where making it is illegal. France, which produces around 8,400 tonnes of raw foie gras annually (roughly 60% of the global supply), remains the industry’s center of gravity. Hungary, Bulgaria, and Spain also continue to produce it.
California’s Ban and Its Legal Journey
California became the first U.S. state to ban foie gras when it passed a law in 2004, though it gave producers a long runway and didn’t take effect until 2012. The law prohibits the sale of products made by force-feeding a bird to enlarge its liver beyond normal size.
The ban faced years of legal challenges from foie gras producers, including a Quebec-based trade association that argued the state law was preempted by federal poultry regulations and violated the Constitution’s commerce clause. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled definitively: the sales ban is neither preempted nor unconstitutional. The court affirmed the law.
There is, however, a notable loophole. The court also affirmed that the ban allows purchases made through online, phone, or fax orders when the entire transaction happens outside California. Specifically, the seller must be located outside the state, the foie gras must not be present in California at the time of sale, payment must be processed outside California, and the product must be handed off to a shipping company outside the state before being delivered to a California address. In practice, this means Californians who want foie gras can still order it from out-of-state vendors.
New York City’s Ongoing Battle
New York City passed its own foie gras ban in 2019, set to take effect in 2022. Given that the city is one of the largest markets for foie gras in the country, the stakes were considerably higher for producers. The law would make it illegal to sell foie gras from force-fed birds, carrying fines of up to $2,000 per violation.
Enforcement has been tied up in court ever since. In 2025, a state appellate court cleared the way for the ban to take effect, rejecting arguments that it would harm farms located outside the city. But the ruling doesn’t mean restaurants have to pull foie gras from their menus just yet. Foie gras producers filed a separate lawsuit that resulted in an injunction blocking enforcement until all appeals are fully exhausted, meaning until there is a “final, nonappealable” order in the related case. As of now, foie gras remains available at restaurants and shops across New York City while the legal process continues.
Why the Debate Persists
The tension comes down to a collision between culinary tradition and evolving standards around animal welfare. Supporters of foie gras, particularly in France, argue that gavage mimics the natural gorging behavior of migratory birds before long flights, and that the practice, when done by skilled handlers, does not cause undue suffering. Some producers point to the fact that birds will voluntarily approach feeders, interpreting this as evidence the experience isn’t aversive.
Opponents counter that the scale and intensity of modern gavage bears no resemblance to natural feeding behavior. A wild goose might eat heavily before migration, but it does so voluntarily and its liver returns to normal size. In foie gras production, the liver becomes so engorged with fat that it enters a disease state. If the process continued much longer, the birds would die of organ failure. The product being sold is, in a very literal sense, a diseased organ.
The economic dimensions also complicate things. France’s foie gras industry represents thousands of jobs, particularly in rural southwestern regions where duck farming is a centuries-old tradition. Banning production domestically in countries like France would face enormous political resistance, which is why most bans have occurred in countries that never had significant production to begin with.
For consumers in places where foie gras remains legal, the question is straightforward: whether the taste of a luxury product justifies the process required to create it. The growing list of jurisdictions answering “no” suggests the trajectory, even if full global prohibition remains far off.