Ducks being raised for foie gras at Hudson Valley Foie Gras in Ferndale. “If we don’t have (New York City), if we don’t have restaurants, we’re basically going to shut down,” said Sergio Saravia, president of La Belle Farm. The two Sullivan County farms produce virtually all of the foie gras in the United States and are asking the state Court of Appeals to hear their case that seeks block New York City’s ban on the sale of foie gras within city limits.
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Foie gras on the summer 2024 menu at Yono’s restaurant in Albany: blackberry jam, toasted filberts, brioche toast.
Konrad Odhiambo/Konrad Shoots Food/for Dominick Purnomo Restaurant Group
ALBANY — Two Hudson Valley duck farms on Monday fired the latest salvo in their seven-year battle to overturn New York City’s ban on the sale of foie gras, arguing that an appellate court’s decision earlier this year ignored the intent of state law.
The Sullivan County producers of the culinary delicacy, La Belle Farm and Hudson Valley Foie Gras, filed a motion for the case to be heard by the state Court of Appeals after the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court declined to allow the farms to reargue or appeal its March decision in favor of the ban.
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Together the two farms produce virtually all of the nation’s commercial supply of foie gras — the artificially fattened livers of ducks or geese — and they contend the ban imperils their future. As the New York City market accounts for about a third of their sales, allowing enactment of the ban, which has been on hold because of legal challenges since being passed in 2019 by the New York City Council, would cost them “millions in annual revenues, force them to implement massive layoffs, and threaten their continued viability and operations,” according to the motion.
An employee force-feeds ducks in a process called gavage at Hudson Valley Foie Gras in 2023.
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“It’s existential for us,” Sergio Saravia, president of his family’s La Belle Farm in Ferndale, said Tuesday. “If you take away 30% of any business’ market, you basically crush them.” La Belle Farm likely would have to fire at least three-quarters of its 150 employees if it lost the New York City market, Saravia said.
“If you’re going to lay off 75% of your workforce, you might as well close,” he said. Representatives of the larger Hudson Valley Foie Gras have previously said it would survive if the ban took effect, but a number of its 400 staff members would lose their jobs. The farms have said they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight the ban.
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Gavage causes the livers of ducks and geese to grow abnormally large. Opponents consider it cruel and have successfully campaigned for bans in California and abroad.
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The New York City Council passed the prohibition because foie gras opponents believe gavage, the forced feeding method used to produce it, is cruel and inhumane. Outlawed in about a dozen other countries and in California, gavage involves inserting a tube into birds’ throats to inject cornmeal for several seconds two or three times a day during the final weeks of their lives, causing livers to fatten fast. Foie gras producers say a duck or goose is not harmed by force-feeding, noting that the bird’s hard esophagus is designed to swallow whole fish, and that ducks and geese lack gag reflexes.
While the New York City Council was considering the ban, known as Local Law 202, the farms repeatedly offered to charter buses to allow members to tour their facilities. None accepted the invitations, Saravia said.
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“We told them, ‘Come see. We’re not doing these antiquated things that you’re showing in the media and saying we’re farming like that. We’re not.’” He continued, “They really don’t comprehend how gentle you have to be (during gavage). This is the product that’s going to pay for … the whole business. So why would you torture and hurt it?”
Marcus Henley, vice president of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, checks on some ducklings as he talks about raising ducks and producing foie gras and other duck products in 2017.
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After farm tours, the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and its commissioner, Richard Ball, issued a ruling that Local Law 202 was superseded by state Agriculture Law Section 305-a, which says that municipalities cannot restrict farming practices in agricultural districts, except where human welfare or safety is concerned. The agency’s ruling was upheld in June 2024 by acting state Supreme Court Justice Richard Platkin, who found that the ban was clearly an effort to curtail a legitimate farming practice.
Further, Platkin reasoned, Local Law 202 could set a dangerous precedent: “(I)t is easy to imagine municipalities using similar bans to indirectly restrict farming practices they deem objectionable or undesirable. Municipalities could ban the sale of eggs produced by caged chickens, or the sale of beef produced by cornfed cattle.”
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In March, a five-member panel of the Appellate Division for the Third Department of state Supreme Court, ruling unanimously, found that Ball had overreached. His decision, the court said, misinterpreted 305-a in a way that would give the state “nearly limitless” power to override local laws. Further, according to the appellate ruling, the ban is permissible because it would have “only an indirect financial effect on farm operations.” Local Law 202 would prohibit foie gras from being sold in restaurant or retail settings within city limits, but residents in the city could order it for home delivery.
In their motion to be heard by the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial body, the farms argue that the appellate division ignored the “plain language, legislative history and overriding statutory purpose” of 305-a, that “nothing about how Local Law 202 will impact the Farms is indirect or peripheral” and that the “City admits that Local Law 202 is an animal welfare measure aimed at stopping a farming practice occurring outside its borders that it deems objectionable.”
Saravia said, “I’m shocked that they ruled the way that they did. But we’re going to continue to fight this. We have to.”