8.27.23 - NYC’s foie gras ban is about more than fancy food
' SULLIVAN COUNTY, N.Y. — With the New York state government’s ongoing legal attempts to block New York City from banning foie gras, critics say Gov. Kathy Hochul is treating Mayor Eric Adams like chopped liver.
Supporters of the ban on the fatty duck liver delicacy say this is more than just an animal rights issue — it’s a matter of letting New York City govern itself, without state interference.
“What Hochul’s done is just a massive abuse of her power,” said Allie Feldman Taylor, founder and president of Voters for Animal Rights, which advocated for the ban.
Opponents counter New York City is the one that’s overreaching. They say it’s trying to effectively end the force-feeding of ducks that doesn’t happen downstate but rather 100 miles northwest in the Catskills.
The 2019 law, which was overturned by a lower court last year and is caught up in the appeals process, is “unreasonable coming from a local government that has no ducks or farms of its own,” foie gras purveyor Sergio Saravia wrote in a legal filing.
Hochul and Adams’ previously close relationship has been strained by the ongoing struggles to provide housing and services for the 100,000 migrants who have come through the city in the past year. Could a high-end menu item that the mostly vegan Adams wouldn’t touch in the first place put added pressure on the relationship?
How the duck is cooked
The New York City Council passed, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law, a bill banning the sale and serving of foie gras in November 2019. It was set to take effect three years later, in November 2022, but the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets ordered the city to foie greddaboudit. The city couldn’t implement the ban since it “unreasonably restricts” two foie gras farms’ “operations and on-farm practices” under state law, the agency ruled.
The Adams administration sued, and got a taste of victory Aug. 3 when an Albany County judge struck down the state’s order blocking the city ban as “arbitrary and capricious.”
That decision is being reported here for the first time.
But the waterfowl war is far from over. La Belle and Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the two duck farms party to the case, filed a notice of appeal Aug. 18.
The state could get another shot at the duck issue too. Albany Judge Richard Platkin’s ruling was based on the state’s failure to comprehensively review the legislative history of the bill. Instead, he wrote, the agriculture department relied on “two brief quotations drawn from a multi-thousand page record.” But he gave the state a second chance by allowing the agency to review the farms’ complaints about the law again, and issue a new order based on a more thorough review.'
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