A day after D.C. residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of a citywide ban on foie gras, the French delicacy with a fancy name, a chef at a popular Capitol Hill spot pledges that he’ll continue to serve the fatty duck livers and one of the biggest suppliers of the delicacy says it plans legal action.
Bart Hutchins, the chef and co-owner of Butterworth’s, a French bistro, who was the staunchest opponent of the ban, said Wednesday that he was disappointed the measure passed but called it a “largely symbolic vote.”
“I will still be serving it for another decade,” Hutchins said. “Between the legal challenges and the city council not being able to afford to fund it, I don’t think it’s ever going to be a statute. … It’s nothing to be hyperbolic about.”
Meanwhile, Marcus Henley, the farm manager at Hudson Valley Foie Gras in Ferndale, New York, said on Wednesday that his company, which has been in the foie gras business for 43 years, plans to take legal action to halt the initiative.
Hutchins said earlier Wednesday that he would join Hudson Valley if it filed a legal challenge to D.C.’s ban.
Documents related to the ballot initiative said D.C.’s ban, if enacted, would take effect July 1, with fines ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 for violations. The city’s chief financial officer said last November that it would cost roughly $314,000 over four years to educate businesses and the public about the law and cover the cost of an inspector to oversee the ban.
The city council would need to decide to fund the effort and there’s no current funding in the D.C. budget for that, city officials said. Eric Balliet, a spokesman for the city’s chief financial office, said in an email on Wednesday, “we have nothing new on this” in terms of the new foie gras ban.
A similar foie gras ban in New York City passed in 2019 but has yet to take effect because of legal opposition, including the involvement from Hudson Valley Farms.
“Of course, absolutely, we’re going to fight it,” Henley said of the new D.C. ban. “They passed a foie gras ban in 2019 in NYC and here we are selling the heck out of it in NYC in 2026.”
Voters in Denver also voted Tuesday to ban foie gras.
The debate over the delicacy was unusually lively in D.C. — where the outcomes of most other races on Tuesday’s ballot had been largely settled by June’s Democratic primary, even as the rest of the country prepared to decide who controlled Congress.
The group Pro-Animal DC and other backers of the ban say it’s cruel to force-feed ducks and geese with a tube down the esophagus to enlarge their livers before slaughter. The group spent more than $470,000 throughout its efforts, according to campaign finance filings. The crusade had a mascot: a duck named Olivia that waddles around the city with her owner, Meghan Abrego.
Foie gras fans say the dish is delicious and no more fraught than other meats people put on their plates. At polling spots Tuesday in the city’s Wesley Heights neighborhood, where houses sell for millions of dollars, some voters said the ban was intrusive and a ridiculous use of government power.
Still, D.C. residents voted 73.3 percent in favor of the ban, according to initial returns. Spring Valley voters showed the narrowest margin: about 60 percent yes and 40 percent no.
By midday Wednesday, Abrego said Olivia was “very pleased with herself” and enjoying a day of “well-earned rest” after weeks of waddling around the city to “save her friends.”
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