Fortnum & Mason Receives PETA’S First Cruellest Retailer Award

For Immediate Release:
13 May 2013

Contact:
Ben Williamson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327, ext 229; [email protected] 

London – Dressed to the nines while walking the red carpet, PETA supporters converged outside Fortnum & Mason’s Piccadilly store today to present company officials with the Cruellest Retailer Award as it rises to the height of hypocrisy by holding its first Food & Drink Awards in celebration of British talent. PETA’s point? That Fortnum & Mason still profits from sales of foie gras, even though its production is so hideous that it’s outlawed in the UK.

“Selling foie gras and profiting from the violent abuse of birds is about as British as the guillotine”, says PETA Associate Director Mimi Bekhechi. “People who think that they are showing their taste for haute cuisine by consuming foie gras should know that what they’re actually eating is the diseased livers of tortured animals.”

To create foie gras, pipes are shoved down birds’ throats and huge amounts of grain and fat are pumped into their stomachs several times a day. Their livers become diseased as they swell to up to 10 times their normal size. The pipes often puncture their throats and can cause them to bleed to death. Despite being presented with graphic evidence of these abuses on farms from which its own distributor obtains foie gras, Fortnum & Mason refuses to stop selling this universally condemned product.

PETA has persuaded Selfridges and Harvey Nichols to drop foie gras. The group’s campaign against Fortnum & Mason is supported by Sir Roger Moore, Dame Vera Lynn, the Duchess of Hamilton, Ricky Gervais and Bill Oddie, among others.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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