Rescue & Adoptions

2007 Featured Rescues

Ducks Discovered in Foie Gras Farm Trash Find Refuge at Farm Sanctuary

Julep, Rachael, Prince Edward, and four other fortunate ducks found their way to our New York Shelter in late October 2007 after a harrowing start to life at a foie gras production facility in Canada. Rescued during a Farm Sanctuary undercover investigation at the farm, the fragile, newly-hatched ducklings were struggling for their lives inside a trash can, where they had been callously dumped and left for dead by facility workers.

Of the six live, yet helpless ducklings pulled from the refuse, four were female. The livers of female Moulards — the breed of duck typically exploited for foie gras — allegedly contain too many veins to yield an ideal product for gourmands. As a result, female hatchlings like Julep and her friends are immediately separated from the males and typically sentenced to death before their lives even begin – they are gassed or suffocated in trash bags. Miraculously Julep, Rachael and the other rescued girls were discovered alive in trash bins full of dead ducklings, having survived their ordeal.

The female Moulard ducks’ equally ill-fated brothers are intensively confined inside dark warehouses and force-fed enormous amounts of food — several times a day — during the last weeks of their lives. If they survive the nightmarish trials of production, male ducks are brutally slaughtered so that their swollen, diseased livers can be made into pâté. The two male ducklings we rescued (Prince Edward and friend) were likely dumped in the garbage by a rushed worker who incorrectly sexed them. Ironically, this turned out to be a lifesaving error resulting in the pair’s escape from the torment of production.

Happily, Julep, Rachael, Prince Edward and the rest of their friends will never know the terrible end result of either force-feeding or the slow and painful death that comes with neglect. Sticking together like birds of a feather, the members of this group now get the royal treatment every day – including the precious freedom to swim in a big open pond, explore their lush, spacious pasture, and socialize with other birds as they please. Far from the horrors they once they knew, they keep growing stronger with each hopeful day.