HOLLYWOOD (CNS) - Gigi's, a new Hollywood restaurant launched by New York City restaurateur Alex Wilmot and Hollywood actress Samantha Ressler, immediately responded to a lawsuit filed Monday by the San Diego-based Animal Protection and Rescue League and agreed to stop selling Foie Gras, a delicacy made by force-feeding ducks, the plaintiffs announced today.
Gigi's is the fifth restaurant in California that the League says it has caused to comply with the ban by filing lawsuits this year. The others were French Laundry in Napa, Petrossian in Los Angeles, Monsieur Marcel in Orange County, and Kettner Exchange in San Diego.
“There is nothing natural about inserting a half-inch diameter, one-foot long metal pipe down a duck's esophagus and pumping up to a pound of corn mash in, two to three times per day, for up to 30 days, until the ducks are on the verge of death from organ rupture and have a distended liver that is over 12 times normal size," the lawsuit stated. “APRL has repeatedly documented and exposed exactly this horror ...''
Hudson Valley Foie Gras is the only producer of foie gras in the United States and operates in a sparsely populated county in upstate New York, according to the Rescue League.
In 2015, HVFG convinced the local district attorney to prosecute and jail an APRL volunteer who documented and exposed alleged cruelty at the farm. New York City last year banned Hudson Valley Foie Gras' products, as California has done.
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