Help Us Make it Happen

• Don’t eat foie-gras – and tell all your friends, family and work/school mates not to eat it either! Go veggie! Click here for more information.

• Tesco are selling foie-gras in their stores in Hungary. This British company are profiteering off the back of 'torture in a tin'. Click here to complain to them.
   
• Click here for your foie-gras action pack, with stickers, leaflets, postcard to your local restaurant and more! Each pack contains 25 leaflets ideal for door-dropping.

• Viva! needs your support. Please donate to our campaign and help us stop the misery of factory farming. Join Viva! if you are not already a supporter.
   
• Write to your local newspaper (this always gets a fantastic response). For a sample letter, click here
  For a list of local newspapers email addresses, click here.
   
• No supermarkets are selling foie-gras because of people like you putting pressure on them to stop. However, there are a few large places still selling it (including Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason). Click here to find out how to contact them and a sample letter to them and anyone else selling foie-gras.
   
• Contact your local councillor. York has banned foie-gras, so has Bolton and Stockport - could yours be next? Click here for a sample letter to write to them. We can also provide you with everything you need.

Foie-gras production is so barbaric it already been ended in 15 countries – and the UK government has said that it would break existing welfare guidelines, so it is essentially banned here. However, although it violates UK animal welfare standards, tons of foie-gras are imported into the UK every year and sold in shops and restaurants.

• Write to Jeff Rooker, MP, Minister of State (Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare), and ask him to ban foie-gras imports to the UK. He has already called for a consumer boycott, so he is sympathetic.
  
  The Rt Hon. Jeff Rooker , MP
  Minister of State (Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare)
  DEFRA
  Nobel House
  17 Smith Square
  London SW1P 3JR

• Viva! is working with the French consumer group, Stop Gavage (French for forced feeding). Visit their website and sign their manifesto for the abolition of foie-gras across Europe.

• Call for a complete ban on force-feeding and the use of birds for foie-gras production in the European Union by writing to:
  
  Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel
  Commissioner for Agriculture
  European Commission
  B-1049 Brussels
  Belgium
  
  Commissioner Markos Kyprianou
  European Commission for Health and Consumer Protection
  Commission of the European Union
  200 Rue de le Loi
  1049 Brussels
  Belgium

Letter

Dear Letters to the Editor

I am very disappointed to see that a local business – [add the name of the restaurant or shop selling foie-gras here] is selling foie-gras.

Foie-gras is the grossly enlarged liver of a duck or goose and is essentially a disease, marketed as a delicacy. Birds raised for this 'gourmet' cruelty are force-fed enormous quantities of food through a long metal pipe, three times a day. This process of deliberate and painful overfeeding continues for up to a month by which time the birds' livers have swelled to ten times their normal size. Every year, around a million ducks die during this period of force-feeding.

Foie-gras is not produced in Britain, as the Government has made it clear that its production would contravene existing animal welfare regulations, but sadly it is still perfectly legal to import it.

However, Viva! persuaded the state of California to pass legislation outlawing both the production and selling of foie-gras after recognising the barbaric methods employed in its production. After an appeal by Paul McCartney, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the ban into law, conceding that foie-gras production is unacceptably cruel.

Local people also have the power to end the sale of foie-gras by not visiting establishments which sell this barbaric ‘delicacy’.

Of course, eating any animal causes suffering – the best way of stopping cruelty is to go vegetarian.

For more information on how to and for free info on how to go veggie, contact Viva!, 8 York Court, Wilder St, Bristol BS2 8QH, tel. 0117 944 1000, www.viva.org.uk/foiegras email info@viva.org.uk.

note: if there is nowhere you know of locally selling foie-gras, you could start your letter with this paragraph: “I was very disappointed to learn that Britain imports tons of foie-gras every year.”