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Letter from Holly Cheever, DVM:

For the third consecutive year, the American Veterinary Medical Association was presented with a resolution during its annual convention, asking for disapproval of the practice of force feeding ducks and geese for foie gras production due to concerns for the welfare of the animals involved. In 2004, Farm Sanctuary and the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights (AVAR) first introduced this resolution, and the AVMA sent it to its Animal Welfare Committee for further study. In 2005, AVAR again introduced the resolution, withdrawing it to support a similar resolution proposed by the AVMA's Executive Board, House Advisory Committee, Animal Welfare Committee, and House Reference Committee. Despite the preponderance of executive-level support, last year's resolution was defeated due to the testimonials of a few delegates who had been taken on staged tours of the major foie gras facility in New York State. This year, the AVMA executives had withdrawn their support and recommended disapproval, and the resolution was soundly defeated.

This year's defeat underscores the AVMA's entrenched historical alliance with agricultural producers which makes its censuring any standard agricultural practice very difficult. Veterinary medicine evolved with a primary focus on agricultural animals, i.e. those raised for food, fiber, and for providing power for work and transport. The current focus on companion animals was a much later development, gaining prominence in the mid-twentieth century and bringing with it an increased attention to animal welfare. This traditional alliance between agribusiness and veterinary medicine, in conflict with the changing societal perception of animals' rights and inherent value, has left the AVMA increasingly in a quandary: the welfare concerns expressed by animal protection groups and by the public are often triggered by intensive confinement practices (e.g. veal crates, gestation crates), that the AVMA condones. Thus it is forced to decide between upholding the welfare precepts expressed in its own Principles of Veterinary Medical Ethics, and defending intensive confinement husbandry with all its inherent denial of basic welfare precepts.

Unfortunately for the ducks used for foie gras production, the AVMA proved once again that they choose to disbelieve the evidence from the European Union and from the United States that foie gras is no more than a diseased liver in a very ill bird, made to satisfy a miniscule gourmet market. Veterinarians serving on the AVMA's House of Delegates charged with voting on this issue did not read the scientific evidence nor view the videographic evidence made available to them. They also chose to disregard the 900 pages of scientific evidence of illness and abuse collated by the Humane Society for the United States and others in preparation for its lawsuits against Hudson Valley Foie Gras.

This refusal to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence delineating the suffering of foie gras birds continues to constitute a public relations nightmare for the AVMA, as one delegate expressed it. It is hoped that it will reconsider its refusal to criticize any intensive confinement system, no matter how egregious, in future years. Farm Sanctuary and AVAR are determined to continue our efforts to educate the AVMA sufficiently so that it will follow its own precepts to relieve suffering and disease in the animals for whom we veterinarians care.

Holly Cheever, DVM
Voorheesville, New York

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