Foie gras is foie-gone.
D.C. voters swung in favor of Initiative 86 on Tuesday, meaning that the production and sale of foie gras, a French delicacy that is produced by force-feeding ducks and geese, will soon be banned in the District.
The result is a victory for the group of animal rights activists that had pushed for its passage and comes as some prominent chefs and restaurateurs made a last-minute push against the initiative.
The effort began just a year ago, when the D.C. Board of Elections gave the go-ahead to the ballot initiative supported by Pro-Animal Future, a nonprofit organization that has advocated for a variety of ballot measures across the country.
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At the local level, aligned animal rights nonprofits have used protests — and live animals like Olivia Gray, a pet duck — to advocate to pass the initiative. Activists have pointed to studies indicating that the farm practice of producing foie gras — which involves force-feeding fowl — harms animals.
When the election results were announced at the watch party for D.C. Council candidate Oye Owolewa at Solly’s bar in Shaw — where supporters of Pro-Animal D.C. had been invited to share the space — the crowd had much to celebrate. In addition to Initiative 86 passing, Owolewa won an at-large seat for D.C. Council.
Owelewa, one of the campaign’s earliest elected supporters, said he was looking forward to helping the council shape enforcement around the issue.
“I’m excited to be on the forefront and ... figuring out what it means for us in 2027,” Owolewa told The Washington Sun.
Not long after Owolewa delivered a victory speech, Olivia the duck, carried by her owner Meghan Abrego, took the stage. After Olivia nipped at the microphone several times and let out a “quack quack quack,” Abrego translated for the duck.
“What was that?” Abrego said. “Landslide win?”
The Initiative, which had been the subject of much online discourse, passed 76% to 23%, with over 117,000 voting in favor of the initiative.
The effort had earned high-profile supporters in the lead-up to the vote, including mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George. But it also had its detractors in the form of some prominent D.C. chefs and restaurateurs.
Celebrity chef José Andrés, who has a foie gras dish on the menu of one of his many D.C.-area restaurants, pushed back strongly against the ban in social media posts, suggesting that there are more pressing societal issues to be focused on and questioning the merits of singling out foie gras as opposed to “banning all meats.” Bart Hutchins, chef at Butterworth’s in Capitol Hill, similarly compared the production of foie gras to commercial farming practices that he described as more harmful to animals.
Other chefs, like Geoff Tracy, the owner of Chef Geoff’s, opposed the ban on the grounds that restaurants, already on shaky ground due to the city’s economic slump, should be able to make their own decisions of what they serve. “It’s one additional regulation or one more thing we have to deal with,” Tracy told The Washington Sun last month. “Just leave us alone for a little bit.”
The word of Andrés, in particular, seemed to carry some weight. Ward 3 voter Robert Rosamelia said that while he understood the concerns about the farming practice, he had been moved by Andrés’ stand against the ban.
“It feels like something chefs should be able to talk to their patrons about,” Rosamelia told The Sun after casting his ballot Tuesday.
Others went into the voting booth without much of an opinion. “It just was not a priority topic,” said Ward 4 resident Beth Washington, who voted against the ban. “I think there’s other, more important things that I would vote on or be concerned about voting about.”
But the vivid language on the ballot, describing the practice as the “force-feeding of birds to enlarge their livers,” proved persuasive for some.
“We didn’t know a lot about it, but we didn’t like force-feeding poor ducks, so we voted for the initiative,” said Ward 3 voter Joanne Howes.
The ban on the sale of foie gras is expected to go into effect July 1 of next year.
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