By Amanda Bronstad, From The National Law Journal

The Animal Legal Defense Fund has waged another battle to ban foie gras from America’s dinner menus.

On Nov. 5, the group filed a lawsuit alleging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s failure to respond to its petition to add warning labels to foie gras violates the Administrative Procedure Act. The case is the second the ALDF has brought against the USDA over foie gras, a controversial French delicacy that comes from the livers of force-fed ducks and geese—typically using a tube in a method called gavage. It’s also one of several challenges across the country over the production of foie gras in the United States.

“We focus on foie gras because it’s in many ways the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with factory farming,” said Carter Dillard, director of litigation at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which is based in Cotati, California. “It is barbaric in terms of how cruel it is to the animals. It creates a food product that violates every food safety standard by inducing disease in the animals.”

A USDA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

The ALDF’s latest case comes after the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has failed to respond to its 2011 petition to put a label on foie gras warning consumers that it is “derived from diseased birds,” citing liver disease and other ailments. By not adding that warning, the USDA runs afoul of the U.S. Poultry Products Inspection Act’s requirement to assure consumers that products aren’t made from “dead, dying, disabled or diseased” poultry, according to the suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

In 2012, a coalition of animal protection groups joined ALDF in a separate case filed after the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service denied an earlier petition to ban foie gras altogether as an “adulterated” product under the U.S. Poultry Products Inspection Act. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California, ruling on jurisdictional ground, found that the plaintiffs’ challenge of the science behind foie gras raised “an issue falling squarely under the USDA’s discretion.”

Oral arguments in that case took place before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Nov. 3 at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. In the USDA’s appeal brief, U.S. Justice Department lawyers challenged the scientific claims of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the standing of all the plaintiffs, which include four consumers. Morgan Hector, an attorney in the Los Angeles office of Steptoe & Johnson, presented oral arguments for the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the other plaintiffs.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund and other animal rights groups also have filed an amicus brief in another case before the Ninth Circuit seeking to overturn a Jan. 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California striking down California’s ban on foie gras as preempted by the Poultry Product Inspection Act.C

IMAGE; Foie Gras terrine. Credit: matt_scherf/iStockphoto.com

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202741867692/Animal-Rights-Group-Cries-Foul-Over-Foie-Gras-Labeling#ixzz3r8ELoVOl