The ban on selling foie gras that New York City passed in 2019 will not go into effect on 25th November 2022 as originally planned. On 15th September 2022, a judge for the New York State Supreme Court issued an injunction to that effect. Two of the only three foie gras farms in the United States are in New York, and in May this year, they took legal action to prevent the ban from being enacted. Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farms claimed that they would face economic hardship as about 30% of their business come from the city, and the city council had gone beyond its scope because the farms exist outside its jurisdiction.
The NYC city council initially passed a bill banning the sale of foie gras because of animal welfare issues concerning the inhumane force-feeding of geese and ducks used to produce it (which is nothing more than diseased liver).
This is not the first time that a campaign to ban foie grass in the US has suffered a setback. In May this year, a court ruled that the law passed in 2004 that banned the selling of foie gras in California, which went into effect in 2012, did not cover imports from outside the state. The ninth circuit’s decision upheld a lower court’s 2020 ruling, which also permitted the shipping of out-of-state foie gras through third-party delivery companies. The UK was going to ban imports of the substance too, but they may not go ahead with the ban as the government has changed, and it is believed the new Prime Minister Liz Truss will ditch all current animal protection bans proposed. The 2014 ban on importing foie gras to India seems to be holding, though. The production of foie gras is banned in several European countries, including the Czech Republic, Italy, and Germany, but not the selling (which makes no sense if the reasons were animal welfare-related).
