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animal cruelty
The Big Apple Finally Bids Farewell to Foie Gras
Last month, a New York appellate court upheld the city’s ban on the sale of foie gras, ending years of legal obstruction that delayed the will of the City Council and the clear moral instincts of New Yorkers.
Apr 04, 2026
At long last, New York City can say goodbye to foie gras from force-fed ducks.
Last month, a New York appellate court upheld the city’s ban on the sale of foie gras, ending years of legal obstruction that delayed the will of the City Council and the clear moral instincts of New Yorkers.
The ruling is a long-overdue victory—not just for ducks and geese subjected to force-feeding, but for the democratic process itself.
Back in 2019, the New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to ban the sale of foie gras, a product made by force-feeding ducks and geese until their livers swell to many times their natural size. Council Member Carlina Rivera, who sponsored the legislation, showed tremendous leadership in bringing the issue forward and building broad support among her colleagues.
No civilized society should tolerate the force-feeding of animals like this. And certainly a city that prides itself on compassion and progress should not allow such products to be sold in its restaurants and markets.
The Council’s message was clear: Extreme animal cruelty and the product of that abuse has no place in New York City.
To understand why, it’s important to understand what foie gras actually is.
On foie gras factory farms, ducks and geese are confined and repeatedly restrained while workers force metal or plastic tubes down their throats. Through those tubes, large quantities of grain are pumped directly into their stomachs several times a day. The process is so aggressive that the animals’ livers swell to as much as 10 times their natural size, leaving them struggling to walk, gasping for breath, and suffering from severe organ damage.
The product that results—marketed as a luxury delicacy—is quite literally diseased liver created through deliberate cruelty.
No civilized society should tolerate the force-feeding of animals like this. And certainly a city that prides itself on compassion and progress should not allow such products to be sold in its restaurants and markets.
That is why the City Council acted.
Yet instead of respecting the overwhelming vote of New York City’s elected representatives, the foie gras industry turned to Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration to defend abuse in the courts. For a time, those efforts succeeded when a lower court overturned the law based on legal arguments that strained common sense.
Fortunately, the appellate court saw through them.
In restoring the ban, the court affirmed a basic principle: Cities have the authority to decide what products belong in their communities. New York City regulates countless aspects of commerce in order to protect public health, safety, and shared values.
Drawing the line at food produced through extreme animal abuse is entirely reasonable.
But there is another troubling part of this story.
Throughout this legal fight, Gov. Hochul’s administration used New Yorkers' taxpayer dollars and the state’s attorneys in ways that helped prolong litigation aimed at undermining New York City’s law. In doing so, the state effectively funded and supported efforts that weakened the democratic decision of our city and supported animal abuse.
New Yorkers deserve better than seeing taxpayer dollars spent defending the foie gras industry.
Now that the appellate court has restored the law, Gov. Hochul should end any further attempts to undermine New York City’s authority to protect animals and reflect the values of its residents.
This victory belongs to many people: to Council Member Rivera for championing the legislation, to the council members who voted overwhelmingly to pass it, Voters For Animal Rights who championed the bill, and to the advocates across the city who fought to expose the cruelty behind foie gras.
Their persistence paid off.
And now New York City can finally say what should have been obvious all along: Force-feeding animals is wrong. And foie gras has no place in our great city. Farewell, foie gras!
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Ethics Group Asks SEC to Probe Musk Claims About 'Gruesome' Neuralink Monkey Trials
"It seems obvious to everyone but Elon Musk that Neuralink's device is unsafe," said one critic. "Now he is deliberately misleading investors and the public by outright lying about the company's monkey experiments."
Sep 21, 2023
After obtaining records showing a dozen monkeys were euthanized in "gruesome" trials, a national physicians group on Wednesday asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate claims made by Elon Musk, owner of the biotech firm Neuralink, about the company's experimental brain implants.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) requested an SEC probe into possible securities fraud committed by Musk when he claimed that "no monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant" during testing of the company's implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCI), and that the animals who died were all already terminally ill when chosen for experiments.
However, records obtained by PCRM and WIRED revealed that 12 previously healthy Rhesus macaques were euthanized by Neuralink due to problems with the company's implant. Health records offer no evidence that the 12 monkeys were terminally ill, as Musk claimed. Rhesus macaques commonly live around 20 years in captivity, with some reaching the age of 40. The average age of the 12 monkeys who died during Neuralink experiments was 7.25 years.
"It seems obvious to everyone but Elon Musk that Neuralink's device is unsafe and dangerous," PCRM research and advocacy director Ryan Merkley said in a statement. "Now he is deliberately misleading investors and the public by outright lying about the company's monkey experiments."
Veterinary records paint what WIRED called a "gruesome portrayal" of suffering endured by monkeys during Neuralink trials.
PCRM recounted the story of "Animal 15," a 6-year-old female Rhesus macaque assigned to Neuralink trials at the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) at the University of California, Davis in September 2017. The following spring, she began "task training," during which the animal is confined in a restraint device. She did not take well to the training and refused to eat. Then she and another monkey escaped from their cages.
On December 17, 2018, "Neuralink staff drilled holes into Animal 15's skull, removed part of her skull and skin to expose her brain, and implanted two electrodes, one in each hemisphere of her brain. The surgery lasted five hours."
According to research records, Animal 15 developed a host of medical problems, including excessive itching, bloody discharge, and loss of balance. She was repeatedly observed pulling on the port connector in her skull and was seen pressing her head against the floor, a possible sign of pain or neurological impairment.
On Christmas 2018, Animal 15 was seen "pulling and picking at the incision sites." Both of her eyes were swollen half-shut. By March, large quantities of discharge were observed coming from Animal 15's head; lab tests showed multiple bacterial infections on her implants. Her health declined until she was euthanized on March 21, 2019.
"A necropsy found that the Neuralink implants left parts of Animal 15's brain 'focally tattered,' that 'remnant electrode threads' were found in her brain, and there were indications of hemorrhaging," PCRM said.
In the case of "Animal 22," a monkey euthanized in March 2020, a necropsy report states that "the failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection," an apparently direct contradiction of Musk's claim that no animals died from Neuralink implants.
A former Neuralink employee, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, told WIRED that Musk's claim is "ridiculous" and "straight fabrication."
A doctoral candidate currently researching at CNPRC—who also requested anonymity for similar reasons—told the outlet that "these are pretty young monkeys."
"It's hard to imagine these monkeys, who were not adults, were terminal for some reason," the researcher added.
As WIRED reported Wednesday:
If the SEC does investigate Musk's comments, it would mark at least the third federal probe linked to Neuralink's animal testing. In December 2022, Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General had launched a probe into Neuralink's treatment of some animal test subjects. In February 2023, the U.S. Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Neuralink over allegations of unsafe transport of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
These investigations followed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration initially rejecting Neuralink's application, in early 2022, for approval to conduct in-human clinical trials. According to Reuters, the agency's major concerns involved the device's lithium battery, as well as the possibility that the implant's wires might migrate to other parts of the brain.
Despite this, the FDA in May gave Neuralink the green light to begin human trials. On Wednesday, the company announced it would start recruiting adults with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease—for trials.
Called the PRIME study, the trials will test Neuralink's ability to help people with paralysis control devices. The company said Wednesday that it aims to "grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone."
In 2018, the SEC charged Musk with securities fraud for a series of false and misleading posts on Twitter—which he later bought and rebranded as X—about potentially taking his electric car company Tesla private. In a settlement, Musk agreed to resign as Tesla's chairman and pay a $20 million penalty. The company was also hit with a $20 million fine.
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Farm Sanctuary Gets Lift from Celebrity Couple Jon and Tracey Stewart
"We're going to build new advocates, new curious learners, and new leaders for this very important movement," says Tracey Stewart
Oct 27, 2015
Offering a boost to the animal rights movement and farm animals everywhere, former Daily Show host Jon Stewart and his wife, advocate and former veterinary technician Tracey, announced this weekend that their property in Middletown, New Jersey, will be the fourth outpost of the nation's largest and most effective farm rescue and protection organization.
"We bought a farm in New Jersey to start a farm sanctuary of our own with an educational center," Tracey Stewart told attendees of the Farm Sanctuary's 100%-vegan gala on Saturday evening, "but what I'm announcing tonight is that our farm is actually going to be the New Jersey branch of Farm Sanctuary. We will build new advocates, curious learners, and leaders for this very important movement."
The organization currently operates three shelters--a 175-acre sanctuary in upstate New York, a 300-acre sanctuary in Northern California, and a 26-acre sanctuary in Southern California--where they rescue, rehabilitate, and provide lifelong care for hundreds of animals who have been saved from stockyards, factory farms, and slaughterhouses. In addition, the nonprofit promotes "compassionate vegan living" through rescue, education, and advocacy efforts.
In August, Jon Stewart ended a 16-year run on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. "I'm a little uncomfortable," he announced at Farm Sanctuary's annual gala. "I've spent the last 20 years immersed in the world of Washington politics and the media landscape, so I don't know how to deal necessarily with people who have empathy."
As Farm Sanctuary pointed out in a press statement, "viewers of The Daily Show have undoubtedly noticed Stewart's increasingly frequent rants and barbs aimed at politicians who ignore the suffering of animals to further their agendas, including an 8-minute segment dedicated to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's refusal to sign a bill that would end the lifelong confinement of pigs in crates so small they can't even turn around."
Farm Sanctuary president and co-founder Gene Baur appeared on the show to discuss his new book, Living the Farm Sanctuary Life: The Ultimate Guide to Eating Mindfully, Living Longer and Feeling Better Every Day (Rodale Books), earlier this year:
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