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The Portland City Council will vote Thursday whether to ban the sale and provision of force-fed foie gras in Portland. The ordinance has pitted the animal rights group Pro-Animal Oregon against members of Portland’s restaurant industry: 81 people signed up for public comment at the policy’s first reading on April 29.
That sea of public testimony has largely obscured the councilors’ views of the ordinance. On May 27, the council moved the policy to a second reading without discussing its merits.
But the council did discuss an amendment by Council Vice President Olivia Clark to allow businesses more time to comply with the ordinance. They eventually voted 9–3 to extend the effective date to 180 days after the policy’s passage.
And the discussion around that amendment offered hints that the tweaks would provide the seven votes the council needs to pass the ban.
The most obvious: As the council held a roll-call vote on the amendment, Councilor Angelita Morillo said, “Because I expect we’ll have seven votes with the compromise, then yes.”
Given that all six members of the council’s progressive caucus, of which Morillo is part, are likely to support the ban, its fate rests with a few potential swing votes—most obviously, Councilor Steve Novick.
When reached by WW on Monday, Novick said he would vote yes on the ban. Ultimately, he said, he couldn’t condone force-feeding animals so that a few people could eat a delicacy.
The ordinance would prohibit restaurants, retailers and food services in the city from selling or otherwise providing force-fed foie gras or dishes that use it as an ingredient. It would not limit private possession or consumption of force-fed foie gras, nor the sale of foie gras that has been produced without force feeding. Anyone selling the dish will have to provide documentary evidence that it has not been force-fed.
Foie gras is an exceedingly small fraction of both the national farming industry and the Portland restaurant scene. Two farms in upstate New York produce virtually all of the foie gras in the country; only one other farm, in Minnesota, produces commercial foie gras.
Only seven restaurants and one retailer were selling foie gras in Portland as of late April, according to Pro-Animal Oregon. A total of 16 restaurants and two retailers have offered it during the past year.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Councilor Mitch Green, the policy’s main sponsor, said at the first reading on April 29. “Force-feeding animals is cruel. And while I recognize it doesn’t end all animal cruelty, it does limit some.”
Enforcement of the ordinance will be complaint-based, meaning the city won’t have to fund oversight to ensure compliance. A written warning will be given for a first violation. If the violation isn’t corrected within 14 days, the violator will be fined between $1,000 and $5,000.
The majority of public commenters supported the ban, many of whom wore bright green Pro-Animal Oregon T-shirts and held signs reading “End Force-Feeding” and “Ban Force-Fed Foie Gras.” Most who spoke in support objected to the cruelty of force-feeding ducks and geese through metal tubes to induce fatty liver disease—“foie gras” means “fatty liver” in French. They also protested the living conditions the animals are often put in, such as cages or barns with no access to water for swimming.
Some activists also argued that a majority of Portlanders are in favor of such a ban. Sam Schillinger, Pro-Animal Oregon’s campaign director, cited a 2026 study by the Animal-Human Policy Center at Colorado State University that found, of 250 Portlanders polled, 81% supported banning the sale of force-fed foie gras in the city.
Opponents of the ordinance said that because foie gras is such a small fraction of the food industry, passing the ordinance is performative and doesn’t address larger systems of animal cruelty, such as the poultry industry. Some 9 billion chickens are killed in the United States every year.
But supporters argued that the existence of other animal cruelty shouldn’t affect this ban. “Some cruelty is not a reason to allow other cruelty to continue,” said Eva Hamer, Pro-Animal Oregon’s executive director, at the April 29 hearing. “This is a narrow, practical step against a uniquely indefensible product.”
Foie gras bans have been spreading across the country and around the world in recent years. At least 27 countries have limited the production, sale or import of foie gras. Brazil became the latest to do so on April 28, pending its president’s signature. The state of California, New York City, Pittsburgh and Brookline, Mass., have also banned it.
Most public commenters who opposed the ordinance said it would hurt the city’s food industry at a time when small restaurants are already struggling to survive. They argued that good food has put Portland on the map, and banning foie gras amounts to attacking one of the few parts of Portland still drawing people to a city that should take any good publicity it can get.
The French restaurant Le Pigeon, on East Burnside Street, has become the centerpiece of this argument. Two of the seven dishes on Le Pigeon’s nonvegetarian menu are foie gras; when The New York Times named the restaurant one of Portland’s 25 best in 2024, most of its review was about foie gras. “People come to Portland to eat,” said Gabriel Rucker, chef and co-owner of Le Pigeon and its sibling restaurant Canard (French for “duck”) at the April hearing. “They come for my foie gras profiteroles. I can’t think of any time that someone has not come to visit Portland because a restaurant serves foie gras. I think that we are missing the forest for the trees here, and that going after us and the farms that produce foie gras is performative at best.”
(La Belle Farm of Ferndale, N.Y., which Rucker’s co-owner Andrew Fortgang says provides Le Pigeon, Canard and most Portland restaurants with their foie gras, is currently suing New York City to stop its ban. The farm has said the ban could force it to shut down.)
Some councilors have given indications about their final votes. Based on their comments, Green and his co-sponsors, Council President Jamie Dunphy and Councilors Morillo and Tiffany Koyama Lane, will likely be joined by Councilor Sameer Kanal—but that accounts for only five of the necessary seven votes to pass the policy.
Councilor Dan Ryan stated clearly he would vote no. Clark and Councilors Eric Zimmerman and Loretta Smith also seemed against it. Kanal asked Clark and Smith if extending the effective start date of the ban to one year out—which Clark’s original amendment proposed—would convince them to vote yes. They appeared to say no.
“No, so what’s the point?” Morillo could be heard saying.
“The point is not punishing businesses,” Zimmerman shot back. “That is the point.”
Councilors Candace Avalos and Elana Pirtle-Guiney have given no indications of their final votes. Avalos voted for the effective date extension; Pirtle-Guiney voted against it.
Those votes suggest Novick’s stance will prove decisive on Thursday.
He says he recognizes the effect his vote will have on a few Portland restaurants. “I do feel an obligation to eat off the vegetarian menu at Le Pigeon,” Novick told WW.
