Animal Rights Activist Being Sent to Jail: “The Animals Have it Far Worse.”
Amber Canavan is spending the month of July in jail. Her crime? Entering a foie gras facility, where tens of thousands of ducks are intensively confined and force fed through metal pipes, and rescuing two of them.
“We still live in a world where people who commit the abuses are victims and those who expose them are criminals,” said Ms. Canavan. “I don’t want to go to jail, but my time there will be a cakewalk compared to what animals are forced to endure in foie gras factories.”
In 2011, Ms. Canavan and another activist whose identity she has protected paid a late night visit to Hudson Valley Foie Gras in upstate New York, the largest foie gras producer in the United States. While there, she documented the “deplorable” conditions in which the ducks are kept. The footage she captured was used in a foie gras exposé produced by the Animal Protection and Rescue League and narrated by actress Wendy Malick.
In February, the NY Times published a lengthy story about the incident, which linked to the video and informed readers about the “force feeding” required to produce this “controversial” dish. “I take comfort in the fact the NY Times article and the footage that I took have helped to expose the atrocities being committed against these animals,” said Ms. Canavan.
After several weeks of intensive care, the two ducks rescued by Ms. Canavan recovered from their injuries and are “flourishing” at a sanctuary, where they have access to fresh air, proper care and water for swimming. Ducks and geese are aquatic animals, but they have no access to water in foie gras factories.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on touch of home and commented:
I wish all animals to be treated with respect and love, not for profit!
All blessings on her for taking the risk and helping. I wish this case would backfire on the exploiters of these poor ducks and the authorities by getting attention in the media–if they bother to cover it. At least the Internet can help spread the story. It’s hard to believe that people could subject animals to such torture for a few moments of pleasure. Self-centered sybarites!
I have contacted this very expensive restaurant in Santa Fe, NM regarding their continued featuring of Foi Gras on their menu: Here is the e-mail if anyone wishes to contact them: jane@compoundrestaurant.com.
I sent an email to the restaurant asking them to discontinue foi gras on the menu.
What a ghastly process. It is a messed-up world when exposing violence and abuse is the crime. She is to be commended, not held in jail – but she is a woman of principle. You don’t see that much these days.
Someone once said that in a fundamentally unjust society the truly just will only be found in jail. Ms. Canavan makes me ashamed to be on the outside instead of in there with her.
“Her crime? Entering a foie gras facility, where tens of thousands of ducks are intensively confined and force fed through metal pipes, and rescuing two of them.”
Another fundamentally unjust society–Nazi Germany–would have considered going to a concentration camp and rescuing two Jews a crime as well. Where is this society headed? Speciesism is so ingrained in human societiesthat it’s written into the law books.