Though food people got very excited when California's two-and-a-half-year-old ban on foie gras got struck down in early January, there's a chance the ban could get reinstated albeit a small one. Attorney General Kamala Harris has filed an appeal with Ninth Circuit, as SFist learns today, much to the applause of the animal cruelty lobby.
We just got the email from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, whose executive director Stephen Wells says, "We are confident that the Ninth Circuit will correct the District Court’s mistake, and hope that the Attorney General will hasten this result by expediting the appeal."
The January 7 decision by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson came with a long and well reasoned ruling that said not only that the state's ban caused unfair financial injury to out-of-state producers of the fatty duck liver, but also that "California cannot regulate foie gras products’ ingredients by creatively phrasing its law in terms of the manner in which those ingredients were produced."
I'm no expert in legal matters surrounding food and animal cruelty, but given that a similar ban in Chicago was struck down within two years during the last decade, it does seem likely that this ban will remain struck down.
Also, it seems like judges will make the logical leap that many people have made between this law and the larger, industrial food complex, where various levels of cruelty are inflicted on chickens, pigs, and cows on a much larger scale across the country every day. The foie gras thing, because it involves forced feeding to fatten ducks' livers, just became hot-button because of a well publicized campaign that included multiple videos.
