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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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SEPTEMBER 2005
AVMA refuses to condemn foie gras, amends sow crate policy, excludes critics from hall
MINNEAPOLIS––The American Veterinary Medical Association House of Delegates on July 16, 2005 unanimously defeated a resolution asking the AVMA to formally find inhumane the practice of force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras.
The resolution was rejected, AVMA publicist Sharon Granskog said, “because limited peer-reviewed scientific information dealing with the animal welfare concerns associated with foie gras is available, and because the observations and practical experience of members indicate a minimum of adverse effects on the birds involved.”
Charged Farm Sanctuary in a membership alert, “The AVMA House of Delegates rejected the 1998 Report of the Scientific Committee on Welfare Aspects of the Production of Foie Gras in Ducks and Geese as being out-dated.”
The resolution was squelched, Farm Sanctuary alleged, “due to opposition by the American Association of Avian Veterinarians, the American Association of Avian Pathologists, and the New York State Veterinary Medical Association. These organizations claimed that their recent visits to foie gras farms in New York revealed proper care of birds. However, in previous unannounced visits to the same farm, ducks were videotaped in diseased and filthy conditions.”
There are only four foie gras farms in the U.S., three in New York and one in California. Former Israeli foie gras farm field manager Izzy Yanay founded the New York, trio, beginning in 1982. Yanay started the largest as Commonwealth Enterprises in 1990, but changed the name to Hudson Valley Foie Gras after two PETA undercover operatives in 1991 videotaped numerous alleged violations of the New York state humane law.
The American SPCA, then headed by the late Roger Caras, refused to prosecute. In January 1995 ASPCA veterinarian Michael Krinsley reported after an announced visit that Hudson Valley Foie Gras appeared to be “clean and well run,” in compliance with the law, and that a dead bird retrieved for necropsy “lacked any signs of disease or physical injury associated with inhumane treatment.”
However, upstate New York activist Joel Freedman obtained a copy of the necropsy report and sent it to New York wildlife pathologist Mark Lerman, DVM.
Lerman wrote that it “depicts an animal in extremis,” whose “esophagus is so thickened, inflamed and infected from the forced feeding that he could never eat on his own. Infection has apparently spread to other parts of his body,” Lerman said, “resulting in an overwhelming toxic reaction that either killed him or resulted in his euthanasia. If these lesions were caused by a child repeatedly thrusting a stick down the throat of this duck,” Lerman concluded, “no one would deny that this child was guilty of torture.”
Responded Krinsley, “I want to emphatically state that by no means does [my] finding suggest my endorsement of the practice of rearing birds for foie gras.”
The controversy reignited after foie gras production was banned by the Supreme Court of Israel in August 2003, inspiring a global resurgence of anti-foie gras activism.
Both Farm Sanctuary and Sonoma Foie Gras, the California producer, endorsed 2004 California state legislation which enables Sonoma Foie Gras to operate until 2012 with an explicit exemption from humane enforcement, after which force-feeding is supposed to end if the law is not amended or extended. The California law was also supported by the Humane Society of the U.S. and In Defense of Animals, but was opposed by the Humane Farming Association and Friends of Animals.
Compassion In World Farming initially applauded the California law, then reversed positions after re-examining it.
Farm Sanctuary and Hudson Valley Foie Gras went on to jointly push a bill during the 2005 New York spring legislative session which would have allowed the New York farms a 10-year exemption from humane enforcement. The bill cleared the New York state house agriculture committee, but did not advance further. It may be reintroduced later.
Sow crates & AWI
Increasingly thin-skinned over criticism of its farm animal welfare policies, the AVMA meanwhile barred the 54-year-old Animal Welfare Institute from exhibiting at the 2005 conference.
“Since 1963, AWI has exhibited at the annual meeting of the AVMA 21 times,” recounted AWI president Cathy Liss. “In December 2004, AWI submitted an application for exhibit space. More than five months later, on June 10, 2005, we received a rejection letter—nine days after the Association announced a new policy addressing ‘contentious exhibitors that may be detrimental to the attendee experience.’”
Liss noted two potential conflicts with the AVMA leadership. One is AWI opposition to horse slaughter for human consumption. The other, Liss said, was “our exhibit at the 2004 convention, which was described by an AVMA representative as ‘very contentious.’
“Our exhibit displayed a life-sized cloth pig in a real gestation crate,” Liss said. “Approximately 70% of pregnant sows are confined to gestation crates for the duration of their pregnancies. We sought to inform veterinarians about gestation crates, as well as about alternatives that permit sows to engage in key natural behaviors such as grazing, rooting and socializing. We even had a farmer, one of hundreds whom we work with, discuss in detail the practicality and improved welfare of alternative systems.”
At the 2005 annual conference the AVMA softened an endorsement of gestation crates issued in 2004.
The 2004 statement said, “The industry has moved toward gestation stall (crate) housing, because gestation stalls increase caregiver productivity, require lower capital investment, and are easier to manage than some indoor group housing systems.”
The amended policy statement incorporates those conclusions, but admits that gestation crates also “restrict movement, exercise, foraging behavior and social interaction.”
The new statement concludes, “To address animal welfare in the long term, advantages of current housing systems should be retained while making improvements,” which “should be adopted as soon as the technology is sound enough...the systems are understood and available, and the systems are economically viable.”
AVAR banned in 2004
Barring AWI from exhibiting came a year after AVMA executive vice president Bruce Little barred the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights from tabling at the 2004 AVMA annual conference––after AVAR had already paid for a booth.
At issue was that AVAR in June 2004 co-sponsored a New York Times ad that asked the AVMA to oppose the use of gestation crates, veal crates, and “forced molts,” which consist of starving hens for up to two weeks to induce a new egg-laying cycle.
Also, said AVAR vice president Holly Cheever, the ad highlighted “the inexplicable retention of Dr. Gregg Cutler on the AVMA’s Animal Welfare Committee, where he represents poultry welfare, despite the fact that he was shown in three separate affidavits, including his own sworn deposition, to have ordered the mass slaughter of 30,000 chickens in California by throwing them alive into a wood chipper. Needless to say,” Cheever added, “death by wood chipper is not among the acceptable methods listed in the 2000 Report of the AVMA Panel on Euthanasia.”
AVMA spokesperson Sharon Grans-kog called the ad “misleading” and “negative.”
Co-sponsored by Animal Rights Int-ernational, PETA, and United Poultry Concerns, the ad was similar to one published in the April 2004 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
After controversy erupted over barring AVAR, the AVMA executive board in April 2005 formally adopted a policy excluding from the exhibit hall “messages espousing philosophies or practices contrary to policies and position statements of the AVMA,” AVMA convention and meeting planning division director David Little explained in his June 10, 2005 letter to Cathy Liss.
“We welcome your application for exhibit space in 2006, and assure you it will be reviewed independently and without prejudice,” David Little added.