The pet duck helping the effort to ban foie gras in D.C.

For being involved in a political campaign, Olivia Gray isn’t one for words. But when she does make noise, it has the sound of a familiar refrain: Quack, quack, quack.

“She doesn’t have a voice that’s English-speaking, so I have to be her translator,” said Meghan Abrego, her owner. “We’re just trying to save her friends.”

One could forgive Olivia for not saying anything – she is a duck, after all. But her presence at Eastern Market on a recent Sunday played an important role in the effort to implement one of the quirkier ballot initiatives in recent D.C. memory.

Olivia and Abrego approached shoppers with petitions in hand, asking them to support a ban on the sale and production of foie gras, which comes from the livers of ducks and geese that have been fattened up. The French consider it a delicacy; animal rights activists say it’s a disgrace, arguing that its production most frequently entails force-feeding fowl.

“Look at her, she’s relaxed and happy,” Abrego said, pointing to Olivia as she waddled around in front of a crowd of curious onlookers. A Swedish blue, Olivia is domesticated. “Why not embrace being a duck for what they truly are and can be?”

A citizen-led push, spearheaded by the animal rights group Pro-Animal D.C., recently gathered signatures for Initiative 86 at Eastern Market. Kainaz Amaria/NOTUS

Organizers with the campaign for what is formally known as Initiative 86, launched this year by Pro-Animal D.C., say they are three quarters of the way toward collecting the roughly 24,000 signatures from D.C. voters they need to get on the ballot. Should the group succeed by early July, D.C. voters will get the chance to vote on Initiative 86 in November.

The efforts aren’t limited to D.C. An allied group has already gathered the necessary signatures to put a similar foie gras ban to voters in Denver, and lawmakers in Portland, Oregon, recently (and narrowly) approved their own ban. Pittsburgh took the same step just over two years ago. California has banned the production of foie gras for more than a decade.

“It is one of the most uniquely cruel factory farming processes,” said Cady Witt, the campaign’s director in D.C. “It’s one of the only ones where they use force-feeding and where they have the intention to give an animal a disease.”

The campaign’s petition circulators – some of whom came to D.C. from Denver – lean heavily into describing the force-feeding that ducks and geese undergo, which they equate to essentially giving the animals liver disease; an image on the back of their clipboards shows a duck with a funnel shoved down its throat.

Initiative 86, launched this year by Pro-Animal D.C., say they are three quarters of the way toward collecting the roughly 24,000 signatures from D.C. voters they need to get on the ballot. Kainaz Amaria/NOTUS

It is, Witt concedes, a niche issue in the greater scheme of animal rights advocacy. She calls foie gras a “fancy rich-people product,” but also says dozens of restaurants in D.C. serve it. A recent study from Colorado State University’s Animal-Human Policy Center says D.C. is tied with Las Vegas for having the second-highest number of restaurants serving foie gras in the country; New York is first.

That’s probably down from where things were even a few years ago, largely because of the D.C. Coalition Against Foie Gras, a local activist group that has demanded that restaurants in the city stop serving the product. Their tactics have included loud protests outside and inside restaurants; one restaurateur unsuccessfully sued the group over its aggressive tactics.

But the co-owner and chef of one of the D.C. restaurants still serving foie gras says it’s misunderstood. “It is my favorite ingredient, hands down,” says Bart Hutchins of Butterworth’s on Capitol Hill, where a $29 dish features foie gras paired with lamb tartare and an onion ring.

“America has a culture of enjoying parts of the animal that aren’t prime cuts,” he says. “We used to be able to get liver and onions on the menu. We’ve lost that. Foie gras is one of those low barriers to entry to get back into that. It’s hyper-palatable.”

“It is my favorite ingredient, hands down,” says Bart Hutchins of foie gras. Kainaz Amaria/NOTUS

Hutchins says it’s a year-round dish in the restaurant, which is popular with Republican administration officials and congressional staffers, and one of its most ordered.

Hutchins – who also recently served a foie gras ice cream – disputes that ducks and geese are harmed in the production of the ingredient, and that in the greater fight for animal rights and a healthier food system, there are greater battles to be fought.

“Commercial pigs are disgusting. Commercial chickens, too,” he says. “We could ban the sales of animals raised that way, or there are many ways we could be conscious of animals and the quality of our foods, but this isn’t one.”

Chef Bart Hutchins at Butterworth’s on Capitol Hill prepares lamb tartare topped with an onion ring and foie gras. Kainaz Amaria/NOTUS

Animal rights activists like Max Broad of D.C. Voters for Animals don’t disagree that there are other, more widespread issues that merit attention, though he says focusing on foie gras makes strategic sense.

“This being kind of niche makes it digestible,” he says. “It’s not a sweeping change, it’s small and it makes sense. And it’s not going to raise hackles because a lot of people don’t eat it or even know what it is. It’s something people can get on board with without making any sacrifice.”

There have been similar niche efforts in D.C. in the past. In 2020, the D.C. Council passed a bill banning the sale of ivory and rhino horns. A later push to ban fur sales faltered, though. And while ballot initiatives have become a regular feature of D.C. elections over the past decade – voters have weighed in on everything from legalizing marijuana possession to implementing ranked-choice voting – and they usually pass, a 1991 initiative to ban horse-drawn carriages in the city failed.

Witt says she’s confident the campaign will collect the signatures it needs to get on the November ballot. And if it’s approved by voters, she thinks it will carry symbolic weight. “If we can get this banned here, the force-feeding of birds,” she says, “we’ll set a precedent for the rest of the country.”

The French consider foie gras, which comes from the livers of ducks and geese that have been fattened up, to be a delicacy; animal rights activists say it’s a disgrace, Kainaz Amaria/NOTUS

Hutchins hopes it doesn’t even get that far. But if it does, he says he’s already agreed to a televised debate on the issue. “It’s so easy to be uneducated about the things we’re voting on. It is to some extent a really good example of politics of our time: all outrage and no substance,” he says. “I would encourage people not to sign it.”

Back at Eastern Market, though, D.C. resident Nick Wall was convinced enough by a circulator’s pitch – and Olivia’s presence – that he signed the petition to get Initiative 86 on the ballot. “I don’t like the idea of force-feeding anything,” he said.