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Animal-rights video shows cruelty to foie gras ducks
CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, July 12, 2007

MONTREAL -- A Montreal-based animal-welfare group has released footage and photos taken during a three-month clandestine investigation into alleged animal cruelty at Elevages Perigord, Canada's largest producer of fatty duck liver, or foie gras.

Global Action Network's three-minute film shows employees kicking ducks unable to move due to enlarged livers from the force-feeding process that takes place before they are slaughtered, and stuffing sickly or small ducks into garbage bags and beating them to death against a concrete block or metal grate.

It also shows garbage bins full of dead ducklings, a duck floundering on a dirty floor while blood flows from its neck and ducks in small cages being force-fed.

A spokesman for the farm in St. Louis de Gonzague, about 40 kilometres southwest of Montreal, said the company is concerned with the matter and will respond shortly.

Some questioned the validity of the video, obtained when a Global Action volunteer became an employee of the farm for three months.

Police are investigating and are still trying to determine whether the images actually came from the farm, said spokesman Ronald McInnis.

The group alleges that the employees' actions contravene the Criminal Code and federal regulations concerning the humane slaughter of animals.

© The Vancouver Province 2007