Bay Area Activists Ask Wolfgang Puck to Stop Torturing Ducks

December 18, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 16, 2004

CONTACT: Alison Stoll, 917-710-7390

astoll

Thursday, December 16— As part of a nationwide campaign against Wolfgang

Puck’s ongoing promotion of cruel foie gras and veal, activists will

gather outside his book-signing event on Saturday, December 15 to ask

him to stop endorsing animal cruelty. The protest, to occur on one of

the busiest shopping days of the year, will be held in conjunction with

Puck’s public appearance at Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco.

Video footage of the suffering on veal farms and foie gras farms will be

displayed, and activists will hand out educational literature and hold

signs declaring, “Wolfgang Puck Tortures Ducks.” The San Francisco

protest comes on the heels of Puck’s book-signing event in Maui, where

protestors successfully convinced the Four Seasons in Maui to remove

foie gras from an upcoming event menu.

As a high-profile chef, Wolfgang Puck has had a hand in promoting both

foie gras and veal on menus in U.S. restaurants. Veal and foie gras

are produced using what are widely acknowledged to be among the

cruelest factory farming practices. Foie gras ducks are immobilized in

tiny cages while they are force fed up to the brink of death. Veal

calves are similarly tortured, chained by their necks inside tiny

wooden crates and fed an iron-deficient diet that keeps them weak and

anemic.

Although humane advocates have approached Puck numerous times to try to

convince him to stop his aggressive promotion of veal and foie gras, he

has turned a deaf ear to activists’ pleas and continues to peddle both

foie gras and white, crated veal on the menus of his restaurants.

Many counties prohibit these inhumane practices, and recently,

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that will

prohibit the force feeding of ducks and geese to produce foie gras by

2012. Similar legislation is being pursued in Massachusetts and New

York in the upcoming legislative session.

In addition, hundreds of restaurants and establishments around the

country have pledged not to serve foie gras or crated veal. For more

information about legislative efforts to ban foie gras and for a list

of establishments that have signed pledges to not serve foie gras or

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