🦆 What the duck, France?

Brazil banned foie gras. That, at least, is how it was reported. What Congress actually passed is narrower and broader at once.

Law 15,475, signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on July 23 after six years in Congress, does not ban a dish. It bans a method: any food obtained by force-feeding — gavage, the metal tube run down a duck's throat. Foie gras appears in the text, but as an example, not as the boundary. A 2015 São Paulo municipal bill did the reverse, naming the delicacy itself (a court would strike it down, though). 

This kind of ban is not novel. Germany outlawed force-feeding in 1972, Norway in 1974, Switzerland in 1978. The French are divided: a 2024 IFOP poll commissioned by the 30 Millions d’Amis Foundation, which advocates for animal rights, found 74% say practices such as gavage are unjustifiable. 

The European bans share a pattern…

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