NYC gets small taste of victory in legal fight with state over foie gras ban

New York City has gotten a small taste of victory in its long-simmering legal fight against the state over its plan to ban foie gras sales in the five boroughs.

An Albany judge earlier this month struck down the state’s December 2022 order that put a halt to enforcement of the ban, finding state regulators had failed to properly study the city law before blocking it.

The state Department of Agriculture and Markets did not conduct the required “meaningful review” of the city’s 2019 bid to block businesses from selling the French pâté, which is made from the fattened livers of force-fed ducks or geese, Judge Richard Platkin wrote in the Aug.3 ruling.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration instead relied on “two brief quotations drawn from a multi-thousand
page record” to justify blocking the city’s plan to ban sales of the fatty delicacy — a luxurious treat that is a staple on the menus of the Big Apple’s top French restaurants.

But foie gras fans don’t need to worry about an immediate end to sales of the pâté within city borders.

Platkin left room to revisit the real legal meat of the case — whether the state has the right to block the city ban on the grounds that it “unreasonably restricts” farming operations in foie-gras-producing Sullivan County — at a later date.

The court will allow the state to reissue its block of the Big Apple foie gras ban after more deeply reviewing the “legislative history” of the city’s effort, the ruling says.

Two upstate foie gras farms that have pushed back on the city’s ban from the start, La Belle and Hudson Valley Foie Gras, and have also filed plans to challenge Platkin’s decision in an Albany appeals court.

“We stand by our position that the NYC ban unreasonably restricts the agricultural interests of upstate farmers,” La Belle’s president Sergio Saravia told the Post on Monday. “We’re confident a higher court will see it our way.”

The Big Apple has been trying to ban foie gras sales since October 2019, when the City Council under then-mayor Bill de Blasio approved the measure as part of a sweeping package of animal rights bills that also included tightening the reins on the horse carriage industry.

Animal rights activists argue that producing foie gras is inhumane because it involves force feeding geese or duck by inserting a foot-long tube filled with grain and fat into the fowl’s throats multiple times per day.

“They just want to drag this out as long as possible to keep profiting for as long as possible,” Bryan Pease, the lawyer representing the advocacy group Voters for Animal Rights, told Politico, which first reported on the Aug 3 ruling, of the foie gras industry.

The farms fighting the ban, meanwhile, claim that they would effectively be put out of business and would be forced to lay off hundreds of workers if Big Apple stores are unable to sell their products.

Gov. Hochul’s office declined to comment Monday on the ruling, while the city Law Department did not immediately respond to a request to comment.