Sir Roger Moore leads campaign against cruel foie gras practices

The French parliament has declared foie gras a national institution in the face of what it sees as a growing Anglo-Saxon plot against the prized duck and goose liver pâté - reports The Times.

Producers of the delicacy have been enraged by a campaign by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an American animal rights group. A film produced by the group and narrated by Sir Roger Moore, 78, shows in graphic detail how the birds that go to make foie gras are force fed with corn until their livers swell to 10 times normal size.

“Imagine having pipes jammed down your throat and food pumped into your stomach,” the former James Bond actor declares in the film. “Please join me and countless other kind people in never eating foie gras.”

It is not the first time that star power has been harnessed by the anti-foie gras campaign — Brigitte Bardot, the French actress, has been fighting the £700m industry for years. But so closely is Moore associated with his 007 role that the French see his appearance on the front line of the pâté wars as part of a British plot to undermine French agriculture.

“The British want to stop our agricultural subsidies,” said Bernard Courtois, a foie gras merchant from Pau, in southwestern France, referring to Tony Blair’s calls for reforms of the European Union’s common agricultural policy.

“And now it seems they are deploying agent 007 against our foie gras.”

The film is to be distributed among British chefs who serve foie gras — among them Gordon Ramsay and Clarissa Dickson Wright .

The French response has been swift. The lower house of parliament unamimously passed a bill last week declaring that foie gras was “part of the cultural and gastronomic patrimony, protected in France”.

Recently, however, the animal rights campaigners have notched up notable triumphs. Israel — once the fourth largest producer after France, Hungary and Bulgaria — has now outlawed production. That followed a similar decision by Italy in 2003. California is to ban sales of foie gras obtained by force feeding from 2012 after intense lobbying from celebrities such as Kim Basinger and Sir Paul McCartney.

Thanks to `JP` for the alert.

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