PETA's campaign against Fortnum & Mason for refusing to stop selling cruelly produced foie gras just got personal for a PETA staff member: Abi Izzard has now officially changed her name to StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty.com.
“Whenever anyone asks for or reads my name, it sparks a conversation about the cruelty of foie gras and Fortnum & Mason’s complicity in the abuse”, says StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty.com. “It’s appalling that Fortnum & Mason, which trades on its British heritage, refuses to stop profiting from a product so cruel that its production is banned in the UK.”
StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty.com’s positive action has already received praise from one high-profile admirer: “Many people know me as James Bond or 007, but I never went so far as officially changing my name from Roger Moore!” says Sir Roger Moore, a fervent supporter of the campaign against Fortnum & Mason and the sale of foie gras. “I hope the young lady now known as StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty.com royally shames this store”.
To produce foie gras, birds are force-fed by having pipes rammed down their throats several times per day and up to 2 kilograms of grain and fat pumped into their stomachs. This cruel practice causes the birds’ livers to become diseased and to swell to many times their normal size. The pipes can puncture the birds’ throats, causing many animals to bleed to death. The surviving birds live in a constant state of terror as they await the next assault. They stop preening because of extreme stress and become sick and lethargic. Despite the fact that PETA has provided Fortnum & Mason with a wealth of scientific and expert evidence to show how cruel foie gras production is, they continue to sell the inhumane product and insist that their birds are raised to the highest standards, whilst refusing to provide any evidence of this claim.
A growing list of prominent figures – including Sir Roger Moore, Ricky Gervais, the Duchess of Hamilton, Twiggy, Jenny Seagrove, Carley Stenson, Peter Egan and Owain Yeoman – have appealed to Fortnum & Mason to follow the lead of Harvey Nichols and Selfridges and stop selling foie gras.
The Facebook page for the new campaign already has more “likes” than Fortnum & Mason’s own.
