First came Twiggy, then Joanna Lumley, Dame Vera Lynn, Pamela Anderson, and Brigitte Bardot, and now me. With what amounts to a bevy of famous women speaking out for the majority of Britons who want to see a ban on the sale of foie gras,...
First came Twiggy, then Joanna Lumley, Dame Vera Lynn, Pamela Anderson, and Brigitte Bardot, and now me. With what amounts to a bevy of famous women speaking out for the majority of Britons who want to see a ban on the sale of foie gras, Fortnum & Mason is running out of excuses to profit from the bloated livers of force-fed geese.As someone who has lived in London for a number of years, I know that Fortnum & Mason strives to be the quintessential British department store. But there is nothing British about ramming a tube down the throats of geese and filling their stomachs with mush. That's why foie gras production is illegal in the UK and more than a dozen other countries and also why Fortnum goes to French farms to stock its shelves. I have watched the undercover video footage that PETA UK shot on these farms, and it's enough to put anyone off their tea and biscuits. Geese raised for the store's foie gras spend their final weeks in cramped pens that reek of the fumes from the waste that accumulates beneath the metal grates on which they're forced to stand. Knowing what it means when the worker with the force-feeding pipe approaches, the terrified geese try desperately to escape, but they have nowhere to go and are too sick and weak to get very far anyway. Some birds are so ill that they can't even stand up - but the workers still mercilessly pump more mush down their throats.More...