Wolfgang Puck Tortures Ducks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 16, 2004

CONTACT: Alison Stoll, 917-710-7390
astoll [at] farmsanctuary.org

Bay Area Activists Ask Wolfgang Puck to Stop Torturing Ducks

Friday, December 17— As part of a nationwide campaign against Wolfgang Puck’s ongoing promotion of cruel foie gras and veal, activists will gather outside his book-signing event on Saturday, December 18th to ask him to stop endorsing animal cruelty. The protest, to occur on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, will be held in conjunction with Puck’s public appearance at Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco.

Video footage of the suffering on veal farms and foie gras farms will be displayed, and activists will hand out educational literature and hold signs declaring, “Wolfgang Puck Tortures Ducks.” The San Francisco protest comes on the heels of Puck’s book-signing event in Maui, where protestors successfully convinced the Four Seasons in Maui to remove foie gras from an upcoming event menu.

As a high-profile chef, Wolfgang Puck has had a hand in promoting both foie gras and veal on menus in U.S. restaurants. Veal and foie gras are produced using what are widely acknowledged to be among the cruelest factory farming practices. Foie gras ducks are immobilized in tiny cages while they are force fed up to the brink of death. Veal calves are similarly tortured, chained by their necks inside tiny wooden crates and fed an iron-deficient diet that keeps them weak and anemic.

Although humane advocates have approached Puck numerous times to try to convince him to stop his aggressive promotion of veal and foie gras, he has turned a deaf ear to activists’ pleas and continues to peddle both foie gras and white, crated veal on the menus of his restaurants.

Many countries prohibit these inhumane practices, and recently, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that will prohibit the force feeding of ducks and geese to produce foie gras by 2012. Similar legislation is being pursued in Massachusetts and New York in the upcoming legislative session.

In addition, hundreds of restaurants and establishments around the country have pledged not to serve foie gras or crated veal. For more information about legislative efforts to ban foie gras and for a list of establishments that have signed pledges to not serve foie gras or veal, see http://www.NoFoieGras.org and http://NoVeal.org/restaurants.htm.