A sustained presence campaign means that committed individuals plan regular, peaceful presence at restaurants that serve foie gras until the restaurant agrees to remove foie gras from its menu. IDA has posters available that depict the dead and dying ducks inside of foie gras farms taken during
APRL's animal cruelty investigation of the foie gras industry. We need people and animal protection groups from around the country to hold the posters outside restaurants serving foie gras for customers to see. With your help, your town could be foie gras free.
Small groups of people holding posters outside of the same restaurant each week has been an effective approach in convincing a restaurant to remove foie gras. The following steps will help you develop a successful sustained presence campaign:
- Request the foie gras "Get Active" pack.
- Identify restaurants in your area that serve foie gras.
- Request a foie gras restaurant pack which includes brochures regarding foie gras production, a fact sheet, and the video - Delicacy of Despair - from IDA.
- Send IDA contact information on restaurants serving foie gras in your area so we can add it to our web site for others to contact.
- Send letters and videos to restaurants in your area serving foie gras. Follow-up with restaurants one week or so after your initial mailing to request a response. If the restaurants have agreed to take foie gras off of their menus voluntarily, inform IDA. IDA will then send out Certificates of Appreciation to the restaurant and recognize the restaurant on the foie gras campaign website.
- If the restaurants refuse to remove foie gras from their menus, they will be placed in a list of potential targets for demos.
- Choose a target. Based on the response from the restaurants, choose a popular restaurant in an area with plenty of pedestrian traffic and be sure that the location is easily accessible to activists and relatively well known. Only one restaurant should be selected at a time. A sustained presence of demonstrators, using the foie gras campaign posters and literature, should protest at the restaurant on a regular basis, preferably a minimum of once per week during their busiest hours. These demos will be quiet vigils designed to make diners lose their appetites as they view posters on their way in to the restaurant.
- Make follow-up calls to the restaurants following demonstrations to determine if they will change their menus.
Contact IDA at
idainfo@idausa.org or 415-388-9641 to find out how to get involved.
Click here to request materials.