Port Eliot Festival Will Be Foie GrasFree, Organisers Tell PETA
For Immediate Release:
22 July 2014
Contact:
Ben Williamson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327, ext 229; [email protected]
Vile Product Will Not Be Allowed on Menus or at Cooking Demonstrations This Weekend
St Germans, Cornwall – Kind-hearted foodies looking forward to the Port Eliot Festival this weekend can rest easy: after hearing PETA’s concerns about how birds are violently force-fed to produce foie gras – a product that Sir Roger Moore calls “torture in a tin” – festival organisers confirmed to PETA that the festival will be a strictly foie gras–free affair.
“Port Eliot Festival is a foie gras free event”, wrote Port Eliot Festival media officer Michael Barrett. “Foie gras will not be served at the festival or used in any cookery demonstrations on site and the festival will ensure that everyone is aware of this policy.”
“We are delighted that after hearing from PETA, the Port Eliot Festival organisers have confirmed that the event will be 100 per cent foie gras–free – a move which undoubtedly reflects the wish of the majority of the members of the public who want to see the sale of this vile French product banned in the UK”, says PETA Associate Director Mimi Bekhechi. “We hope that any restaurants in Cornwall and the South West still using foie gras, which is made by deliberately inflicting suffering and disease on birds, will now follow Port Eliot Festival’s example.”
The festival – a long-time magnet for foodies that has hosted the likes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen chefs – joins a long list of events and establishments that have pledged not to serve or sell foie gras, including The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Brit Awards, Wimbledon, Lord’s Cricket Ground, both Houses of Parliament and the Royal Shakespeare Company. After learning from PETA about the cruelty of foie gras production, both Selfridges and Harvey Nichols also pledged not to sell or serve it.
To produce foie gras, ducks and geese are force-fed several times a day for weeks until their livers become diseased and swell to up to 10 times their normal size. Investigations at foie gras farms have documented sick, dead and dying birds, some with holes in their necks from pipe injuries. Foie gras production is illegal in the UK and more than a dozen other countries.
High-profile people who are backing PETA’s anti–foie gras campaign include Ralph Fiennes, Kate Winslet, Ricky Gervais, Zac Goldsmith MP, Dame Vera Lynn and Sir Roger Moore, who narrated PETA’s video exposé of foie gras production.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.
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