Historic Ellicott City, MD: Protesters armed with mega phones and posters of dead ducks anxiously waited outside Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant on Saturday December 1, 2007 while members of the Baltimore Animal Rights Coalition (BARC) met with executive chef, Michel Tersiguel, to discuss foie gras, the controversial item that they hoped would be removed from the menu. After a thoughtful discussion and a review of materials, Michel Tersiguel agreed to stop serving the pricy pâté once his existing stock runs dry. BARC applauds Tersiguel for his ethical decision and hopes that other restaurateurs will follow his lead.

Tersiguel’s is the third restaurant in the area to agree to halt the sale of foie gras, the diseased liver of force-fed ducks and geese. Timothy Dean Bistro and Ten-O-Six of Baltimore removed the delicacy and signed pledges never to serve it again early on in BARC’s local campaign, a part of an international effort to stamp out the foie gras industry. Foie gras has already been banned in California, Chicago and at least 12 countries. A growing number of chefs and restaurant owners have voluntarily banned it at their establishments including world renowned chef, Wolfgang Puck.

The world wide outcry is a result of the methods involved in foie gras production. Several undercover investigations have exposed the cruel force-feeding process. Ducks and geese often have a long metal pipe shoved down their throats and have up to four pounds of food pumped directly into their gullets three times a day. They are intensively confined in feces ridden cages and kept in dark windowless sheds until their livers become so grossly enlarged that they can barley walk or stand. At this point the liver has become diseased and is served as the expensive delicacy.

“Among the many production methods used on industrial farms, foie gras production is by far the cruelest” says Aaron Ross, the campaign coordinator for the Baltimore Animal Rights Coaltion, “there is just no excuse for this level of cruelty.”