Wimbledon may be just around the corner, but Andy Murray is already a champion for ducks and geese. PETA has received confirmation that the menu at the Olympic Gold Medalist’s new acquisition, the luxurious Cromlix House Hotel in Scotland, will be 100 per cent foie gras–free when it reopens in 2014.
Internationally renowned chef Albert Roux, who once said that foie gras should come with a label warning diners about the hideous suffering of the ducks and geese used in its production, will oversee the hotel’s restaurant and has confirmed to PETA that foie gras, which translates to “fatty liver” and is made from the enlarged and diseased livers of force-fed birds, is most definitely not on the menu.
“Andy Murray and Albert Roux have served up an ace with their tough stance against foie gras, one of the most vile food products in the world”, says PETA’s Yvonne Taylor. “That is why we are happy to present them with PETA’s first ‘Certified Foie Gras–Free’ certificates for proving a point that hoteliers and chefs everywhere should take note of: there’s nothing luxurious about animal torture.”
Roux told PETA the following: “As it happens I’m totally, totally in agreement of not serving foie gras due to the cruelty inflicted on the animals. … In our six restaurants that I run in Scotland, Rocpool, The Atholl, Inver Lodge, Greywalls and Alladale, you will never see on the line a trace of foie gras in our food.”
To create foie gras, metal pipes are shoved down birds’ throats, and huge amounts of grain and fat are pumped into their stomachs several times a day. The birds’ livers become diseased as they swell to up to 10 times their normal size, and the pipes often puncture the birds’ throats – frequently causing them to bleed to death. Foie gras production is banned in the UK and 16 other countries. Wimbledon, in addition to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the BRIT Awards, Lord’s Cricket Ground and the Royal Shakespeare Company, have all pledged not to serve or sell foie gras, and Prince Charles does not allow it on Royal menus.
Foie gras has been condemned by Members of Parliament, Royalty and a growing number of British icons, including Dame Vera Lynn, Oscar winner Kate Winslet, and Sir Roger Moore, who narrated PETA’s exposé video of foie gras production.
