In an oddball attempt to break back into the Japanese fast-food market, Wendy's had introduced a burger that contained foie gras—you know, the smashed, bloated liver of a force-fed goose. But after a PETA campaign—including action alerts (hooray to everyone who chipped in) and an appeal to fellow Wendy's shareholders—the burger chain has dropped the foie gras.

California has banned the sale and production of foie gras, and its production has also been outlawed in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Germany, Israel, and the U.K. Most airlines won't serve it, and the best of the big grocery stores won't stock it.

What You Can Do

If you learn that a restaurant you patronize serves foie gras, please tell the store's owners or managers where foie gras comes from: the utter misery of force-fed birds. Ask them to watch the shocking undercover video recently released by PETA U.K. and narrated by Sir Roger Moore, and let them know that you won't be dining there again until foie gras is taken off the menu.

Geese living in parks near New York City airports are bound for the slaughterhouse. In a misguided attempt to keep geese away from planes, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plan to capture the wild geese, ship them to slaughter, and turn the dead animals over to food banks. PETA sent an urgent letter to both agencies as well as to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo offering to donate healthy and humane meals to the food banks if New York would call off the killing and instead exclusively employ tried and true nonlethal methods of goose control.

Velo Steve/cc by 2.0

 
Killing geese will only exacerbate the problem by creating a spike in the food supply, which will prompt accelerated breeding among survivors and newcomers. That means an increase in geese populations and a vicious, endless, and expensive killing cycle. And imagine the horror of being a wild animal who is suddenly rounded up, packed into a truck, and shipped to a slaughterhouse.

PETA has not received a response to our letter, and we are asking our supporters to appeal to the Department of Environmental Protection, the Port Authority, and Gov. Cuomo to try PETA's easy suggestions for managing the geese humanely—or to at least consider painless euthanasia.
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow