The Federal Humane Society sued New York State over the practice, saying the birds were being force fed, with some suffocating and others developing blood poisoning and nerve damage.

A New Jersey foie gras company says the lawsuit is "totally meritless," and that foie gras production is humane.

The company plans to fight any ban in New York, which is a major market for the dish.

Chicago has already banned foie gras and a California ban will go into effect in 2012.

"Animals should not be kept sick and dying to appease the palates of a few gourmands," Carter Dillard, director of farm animal litigation for The Humane Society, said in a statement announcing the suit.

"The Department of Agriculture and Markets needs to follow its own law and put an end to this cruel and inhumane practice."

The other plaintiffs were Farm Sanctuary, Government Accountability Project's Food Safety Program and the New York State Humane Association.

The state agriculture department could not comment on the suit because it had yet to receive a copy, an agency spokesperson said.

The animal rights groups asked the department in June to stop the production and sale of foie gras, saying a state law makes it illegal to produce food from diseased animals.

They argue ducks and geese are force-fed for weeks until their livers become fattened. Originally a French delicacy, foie gras literally means "fat liver".

California and more than a dozen countries have banned the production of foie gras, and Chicago recently banned its sale because of animal welfare concerns, the Humane Society said.

Foie gras is made from the liver of force-fed ducks and geese. The Chicago City Council banned restaurants from serving the delicacy with an ordinance that went into effect in August.

"If every local, county or state government were free to adopt legislation banning the local sale of products because they did not like something about the perceived political, economic, social or moral conditions under which those products were elsewhere lawfully produced, and then justified those bans on the ground that local sale presented a local moral concern or impaired the local 'reputation,' the impact on interstate and foreign commerce would be enormous," the complaint says.

The Illinois Restaurant Assn. filed its original lawsuit asking the court to void the ordinance, arguing that because foie gras isn't produced in Chicago, the Illinois Constitution doesn't allow Chicago to ban its sale. On Nov. 3 the city asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it's allowed to pass laws that protect its "image and reputation."

"The city has defended the ordinance on the grounds that it enhances Chicago's reputation, but the ordinance does not address any local problems," said Barry Rosen, a lawyer at Sachnoff & Weaver who is representing the Illinois Restaurant Assn. "This opens the door to a U.S. constitution claim, which we are now filing."

Record numbers of chickens and turkeys are being raised and killed for meat in the U.S. every year. Nearly ten billion chickens and half a billion turkeys are hatched in the U.S. annually. These birds are typically crowded by the thousands into huge, factory-like warehouses where they can barely move. Each chicken is given less than half a square foot of space, while turkeys are each given less than three square feet. Shortly after hatching, both chickens and turkeys have the ends of their beaks cut off, and turkeys also have the ends of their toes clipped off. These mutilations are performed without anesthesia, ostensibly to reduce injuries that result when stressed birds are driven to fighting.

Today's "broiler" (meat) chickens have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors. Pushed beyond their biological limits, hundreds of millions of chickens die every year before reaching slaughter weight at 6 weeks of age. An industry journal explains that "broilers [chickens] now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses." Modern broiler chickens also experience crippling leg disorders, as their legs are not capable of supporting their abnormally heavy bodies. Confined in unsanitary, disease-ridden factory farms, the birds also frequently succumb to heat prostration, infectious diseases, and cancer.

Like meat-type chickens, commercial turkeys also suffer from serious physical malformations wrought by genetic manipulation. In addition to having been altered to grow quickly and unnaturally large, commercial turkeys have been genetically manipulated to have extremely large breasts, in order to meet consumer demand for breast meat. As a result, turkeys cannot mount and reproduce naturally, so their sole means of reproduction is artificial insemination. And similar to broiler chickens, factory-farmed turkeys are prone to heart disease and leg injuries as a consequence of their grossly-overweight bodies. An industry journal laments that:

Turkeys have been bred to grow faster and heavier but their skeletons haven't kept pace, which causes 'cowboy legs'. Commonly, the turkeys have problems standing and fall and are trampled on or seek refuge under feeders, leading to bruises and downgradings as well as culled or killed birds.

Chickens and turkeys are taken to the slaughterhouse in crates stacked on the backs of open trucks. During transport, the birds are not protected from weather conditions, and a percentage of the birds are expected to die en route. Birds freeze to death in winter, or die from heat stress and suffocation in warm weather. It is "cheaper" for the industry to transport the birds in open crates without adequate protection, despite high mortality rates. Upon arrival at the slaughterhouse, the birds are either pulled individually from their crates, or the crates are lifted off the truck, often with a crane or forklift, and the birds are dumped onto a conveyor belt. As the birds are unloaded, some miss the conveyor belt and fall onto the ground. Slaughterhouse workers intent upon 'processing' thousands of birds every hour have neither the time nor the inclination to pick up individuals who fall through the cracks, and these birds suffer grim deaths. Some die after being crushed by machinery or vehicles operating near the unloading area, while others may die of starvation or exposure days, or even weeks, later.

Birds inside the slaughterhouse suffer an equally gruesome fate. Upon entering the facility, fully conscious birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail. Although poultry are specifically excluded from the federal Humane Slaughter Act (which requires that animals be stunned before they are slaughtered), many slaughterplants first stun the birds in an electrified water bath in order to immobilize them and expedite assembly line killing.

However, stunning procedures are not monitored, and they are often inadequate. Poultry slaughterhouses commonly set the electrical current lower than what is required to render the birds unconscious because of concerns that too much electricity would damage the carcasses and diminish their value. The result is that while birds are immobilized after stunning, they are still capable of feeling pain, and many emerge from the stunning tank still conscious.

After the shackled birds pass through the stunning tank, their throats are slashed, usually by a mechanical blade. Inevitably, the blade misses some birds, who may still be moving and struggling after improper stunning. Proceeding to the next station on the assembly line - the scalding tank - the birds are submerged in boiling hot water. Those missed by the killing blade are boiled alive. This occurs so commonly, affecting millions of birds every year, that the industry has a term for these birds: "redskins."

1. Report Says Global Poultry Industry is the Root of the Bird Flu Crisis

Press Release from GRAIN. Date: 27 February 2006
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=372

Small-scale poultry farming and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the bird flu crisis now affecting large parts of the world. A new report from GRAIN shows how the transnational poultry industry is the root of the problem and must be the focus of efforts to control the virus.[1]

The spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks has created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of lethal viruses like the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Once inside densely populated factory farms, viruses can rapidly become lethal and amplify. Air thick with viral load from infected farms is carried for kilometres, while integrated trade networks spread the disease through many carriers: live birds, day-old-chicks, meat, feathers, hatching eggs, eggs, chicken manure and animal feed.[2]

"Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem," says Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN. "But they are not effective vectors of highly pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by them."

For example, in Malaysia, the mortality rate from H5N1 among village chicken is only 5%, indicating that the virus has a hard time spreading among small scale chicken flocks. H5N1 outbreaks in Laos, which is surrounded by infected countries, have only occurred in the nation's few factory farms, which are supplied by Thai hatcheries. The only cases of bird flu in backyard poultry, which account for over 90% of Laos' production, occurred next to the factory farms.

"The evidence we see over and over again, from the Netherlands in 2003 to Japan in 2004 to Egypt in 2006, is that lethal bird flu breaks out in large scale industrial chicken farms and then spreads," Kuyek explains.

The Nigerian outbreak earlier this year began at a single factory farm, owned by a Cabinet minister, distant from hotspots for migratory birds but known for importing unregulated hatchable eggs. In India, local authorities say that H5N1 emerged and spread from a factory farm owned by the country's largest poultry company, Venkateshwara Hatcheries.

A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, are doing nothing to investigate how the factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal feed and manure, spread the virus. Instead, they are using the crisis as an opportunity to further industrialise the poultry sector. Initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically-modified chickens. The web of complicity with an industry engaged in a string of denials and cover-ups seems complete.

"Farmers are losing their livelihoods, native chickens are being wiped out and some experts say that we're on the verge of a human pandemic that could kill millions of people," Kuyek concludes. "When will governments realise that to protect poultry and people from bird flu, we need to protect them from the global poultry industry?"

[1] The full briefing, "Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis", is available at http://www.grain.org. Spanish and French translations will be posted shortly.

[2] Chicken faeces and bedding from poultry factory floors are common ingredients in animal feed.


GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

Contact:
Devlin Kuyek, GRAIN, in Montreal
Tel: +1 514 2737314
Email: devlin@grain.org
Website: http://www.grain.org



2. Report Blames Flu on Industrial Poultry Farms Not Backyard Birds

Article from Environmental News Service. Date: 27 February 2006
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp


BARCELONA, Spain, February 27, 2006 (ENS) - Small-scale poultry farming and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the bird flu crisis now affecting large parts of the world, according to a new report from an international nongovernmental organization based in Barcelona. The report says initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens.

Instead, the transnational poultry industry is the root of the bird flu problem, says the report issued today by the organization GRAIN, which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

"Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem," says Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN. "But they are not effective vectors of highly pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by them."

Kuyek says the spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks have created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Once inside densely populated factory farms, viruses can rapidly become lethal and amplify, says Kuyek. "Air thick with viral load from infected farms is carried for kilometers, while integrated trade networks spread the disease through many carriers: live birds, day-old-chicks, meat, feathers, hatching eggs, eggs, chicken manure and animal feed." Chicken feces and bedding from poultry factory floors are common ingredients in animal feed.

By contrast, GRAIN argues that backyard poultry farms watch their birds closely and know when they are sick, but a sick bird or two amongst thousands in industrial poultry operations are much more difficult to detect.

Not an idle pastime for landowners, backyard poultry raising is crucial to food security and farming income for hundreds of millions of rural poor in Asia and elsewhere, providing a third of the protein intake for the average rural household, the GRAIN report states.

Although wild birds are can become ill with H5N1 bird flu, BirdLife International says if wild birds have any role in spreading the virus, it is minor compared to other mechanisms.

BirdLife, a global partnership of conservation organizations in more than 100 countries, says, "All the evidence suggests that H5N1 is highly lethal to migratory wild bird species, and kills them quickly; that infected migrants cannot move long distances; and that the virus is most likely to be contracted locally, close to the site of deaths."

"The current focus on migrating wild birds is misplaced and a potentially dangerous diversion of energy, effort and resources. Attempts to cull wild birds are even more misguided - the target is wrong and the approach is completely ineffective," BirdLife says.

Preventive measures need to concentrate on better bio-security, says BirdLife - surveillance and testing of poultry, controlling the movements and sale of poultry, poultry products and caged birds, ensuring that all poultry manure used in aquaculture and agriculture is properly treated prior to application, and stepping up national and international efforts to control the illegal trade in poultry, poultry products and wild birds.

Nearly all rural households in Asia keep at least a few chickens for meat, eggs and fertilizer and they are often the only livestock that poor farmers can afford.

GRAIN says backyard birds are critical to diversified farming methods, just as the genetic diversity of poultry on small farms is critical to the long-term survival of poultry farming in general.

Before the Asian bid flu crisis, the GRAIN report points out, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization promoted the benefits of backyard poultry for the rural poor and biodiversity and ran programs encouraging it.

But today, with the H5N1 strain at the gates of Western Europe, it is more common to hear the FAO speak of the risks of backyard farming.

The GRAIN report notes that in Malaysia, the mortality rate from H5N1 among village chicken is only five precent, indicating that the virus has a hard time spreading among small scale chicken flocks.

H5N1 outbreaks in Laos, which is surrounded by infected countries, have only occurred in the nation's few factory farms, which are supplied by Thai hatcheries. The only cases of bird flu in backyard poultry, which account for over 90 percent of Laos' production, occurred next to the factory farms.

"The evidence we see over and over again, from the Netherlands in 2003 to Japan in 2004 to Egypt in 2006, is that lethal bird flu breaks out in large scale industrial chicken farms and then spreads," Kuyek says.

The Nigerian outbreak earlier this year began at a single factory farm, owned by a Cabinet minister, distant from hotspots for migratory birds but known for importing unregulated hatchable eggs.

In India, local authorities say that H5N1 emerged and spread from a factory farm owned by the country's largest poultry company, Venkateshwara Hatcheries.

"A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), are doing nothing to investigate how the factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal feed and manure, spread the virus," says Kuyek.

Instead, he says, they are using the bird flu crisis as an opportunity to further industrialize the poultry sector.

Bans on outdoor poultry have been imposed at certain times or in specified locations in - Austria, Canada, China, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said as early as March 2004 that backyard poultry production might pose difficulties in controlling the spread of the H5N1 viral strain of bird flu.

In several countries experiencing outbreaks, up to 80 percent of poultry are produced on small farms and backyard holdings in rural areas, where poultry range freely, said WHO. In China, 60 percent of the country's estimated 13.2 billion chickens are raised on small farms in close proximity to humans and domestic animals, including pigs.

"This situation makes implementation of strict control measures, essential to the control of previous outbreaks, extremely difficult," WHO said. "These control measures - including bird-proof, ecologically controlled housing, treatment of water supplies, disinfection of all incoming persons, equipment, and vehicles, prevention of contact with insects, rodents, and other mechanical vectors - cannot be applied on small rural farms and backyard holdings."

In a Fact Sheet issued this month, WHO explained why H5N1 outbreaks in backyard poultry flocks are of concern.

"Apart from being difficult to control, outbreaks in backyard flocks are associated with a heightened risk of human exposure and infection," WHO said. "These birds usually roam freely as they scavenge for food and often mingle with wild birds or share water sources with them. Such situations create abundant opportunities for human exposure to the virus, especially when birds enter households or are brought into households during adverse weather, or when they share areas where children play or sleep."

"Poverty exacerbates the problem," WHO explains because when even a single chicken cannot be wasted, people eat poultry when deaths or signs of illness appear in flocks.

This practice carries a high risk of exposure to the virus during slaughtering, defeathering, butchering, and preparation of poultry meat for cooking, but has proved difficult to change, says the international health organization.

Because deaths of birds in backyard flocks are common, especially under adverse weather conditions, owners may not interpret deaths or signs of illness in a flock as a signal of avian influenza and a reason to alert the authorities, WHO has found.

"This tendency may help explain why outbreaks in some rural areas have smouldered undetected for months. The frequent absence of compensation to farmers for destroyed birds further works against the spontaneous reporting of outbreaks and may encourage owners to hide their birds during culling operations."

GRAIN says the owners of backyard poultry flocks are being blamed unfairly. "Farmers are losing their livelihoods, native chickens are being wiped out and some experts say that we're on the verge of a human pandemic that could kill millions of people," Kuyek says. "When will governments realize that to protect poultry and people from bird flu, we need to protect them from the global poultry industry?"

The GRAIN report quotes Louise Fresco, assistant director-general of FAO as saying, "The backyard chicken is the big problem and the fight against bird flu must be waged in the backyard of the world's poor."

Kuyek calls this policy reversal, "a reckless mistake," and asserts, "When it comes to bird flu, diverse small-scale poultry farming is the solution, not the problem."

The report, "Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis," is online at: http://www.grain.org/go/birdflu.


3. Factory Farms Behind Bird Flu Spread: Wild Birds Not Really to Blame

Article from Bangkok Post. Date: 27 February 2006
Achara Ashayagachat

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/27Feb2006_news09.php

A new report released yesterday blamed the transnational poultry industry, and not small-scale poultry farming and wild birds, as the root cause of the global bird flu crisis.

The spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks has actually created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of lethal viruses like the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Devlin Kuyek, of the Montreal-based international non-governmental organisation Grain.

Once inside densely populated factory farms, viruses can rapidly become lethal and amplify, said Mr Kuyek in the report released today.

Air thick with viral load from infected farms was carried for kilometres, while integrated trade networks spread the disease through many carriers: live birds, day-old chicks, meat, feathers, hatching eggs, eggs, chicken manure and animal feed, he added.

"Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem," said the researcher of Grain, which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

"But they are not effective vectors of highly pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by them," he said.

For example, in Malaysia, the mortality rate from H5N1 among village chicken was only 5%, indicating that the virus had a hard time spreading among small-scale chicken flocks.

H5N1 outbreaks in Laos, which was surrounded by infected countries, have only occurred in the nation's few factory farms, which were supplied by Thai hatcheries, the report said.

Director Erwin Wagenhofer registers and documents the abuse in the worldwide food industry without passing judgments or giving solutions. This results in a plethora of uncommented visual images of industrial processes: unsavoury pictures of fish with exploded eyes and decapitated chickens, but also more pleasant scenes of sun-drenched Romanian fields and traditional Breton fishing boats.

In between the pictures, a wide variety of experts give comments. Some provide surprising new insights. One of them is a Brazilian biologist, who explains how Europeans are eating the rain forest because we feed our chickens soya beans that have been produced in the region of the Brazilian rain forest. Another is UN nutritional expert Jean Ziegler, who observes that African farmers are starving, not because of insufficient food - enough is produced worldwide to feed twelve billion people - but because their products stand no chance against European goods dumped on the African market. The 'other side' is also given the opportunity to present its views. Solarium-tanned Peter Brabeck, CEO at Nestlé, emphasises positive thinking. "The world is doing better than ever, let's not forget that", is his message to today's defeatists. A rather inappropriate point of view within the context of this film.

As far as the genre is concerned, We Feed the World is in the same category as recent American documentaries such as Supersize Me and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. But Wagenhofer's work is significantly less tendentious and aggressive. All those who appear in the film, participated voluntarily and were treated with respect. This approach works wonderfully well. The images themselves are clear enough for the public to cast harsh judgement on the food industry. Even without a dramatic voice-over, most viewers will probably leave their tasty industrial chicken for a while.