WASHINGTON – A small group of demonstrators gathered outside the Israeli Embassy here Monday to protest against Israeli torture — of geese.
Over the past few months, protests against Israeli practices have become routine, including calls for a halt to Israeli assassinations of suspected Palestinian terrorists, the use of American-made weaponry in such operations and settlement expansion.
Now animal rights groups are rallying against a wholly different kind of Israeli physical pressure — the force-feeding of roughly 700,000 geese and 100,000 ducks in breeding farms every year.
“If you think about the fact that 800,000 lives are taken every year just to produce a delicacy, that’s outrageous,” said Miyun Park, a volunteer for the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who held a sign that read “Stop cruel force-feeding for foie gras.”
After France, Israel and Hungary are the largest producers of foie gras, according to animal rights groups. Thirteen European countries have banned its production.
Earlier this month the Knesset Education Committee made a symbolic gesture to the cause by describing the duck-liver industry as cruel and instructing the Agriculture Ministry to ban duck-liver production within one year.
The vast majority of pâté production in Israel, however, is from geese.
And Israeli human rights groups have said they plan to petition the High Court of Justice to try to secure a ban on goose-liver pâté production. Past appeals to police and the courts have been rejected.
Yesterday’s protest was part of an international campaign, led by the Israeli-based group Anonymous for Animals, to stop the force-feeding of birds.
To produce the liver delicacy, workers shove metal pipes down the throats of geese and ducks thrice daily and pump seven pounds of corn mush into their stomachs — the equivalent of 16 pounds of pasta being force fed into a person.
Many birds die when their stomachs burst or when their necks are gouged by the pipes. The survivors are killed and their livers are turned into the pâté.