Why Starting With a Foie Gras Ban Guarantees the Wrong Debate

Good Morning.

In a few hours, The Portland City Council’s Arts and Economy Committee will hear testimony from opposing sides on whether to ban the sale of foie gras in Portland. To the uninformed and reactive, this sounds like it could very well be the beginning of an important conversation on animal-welfare practices, but if the recent history of such bans in other cities serve as an example, it probably won’t be. It will likely be another case study of how choosing the wrong entry into a larger and more important issue will derail important policy discussions before they even begin.

And in Portland, Oregon in the year 2026, I say that with a lot of sadness, because this seems to be our new normal.

Through the many lessons I have learned (usually the hard way) in business and in life, one important one is this: Where you start a difficult conversation often matters as much or more than where you hope to end it. Start in the wrong place and you don’t just make progress harder, you guarantee you will probably have the wrong conversation altogether.

That’s because bad entry points don’t invite dialogue. They create caricatures. People harden. And important goals get buried under anger and resentment.

And after spending the last hour or so perusing the written testimony for today’s hearing, it’s clear that’s exactly where this whole thing may be heading.

And that’s what time and time again foie gras has proven to be the single worst possible and most divisive entry point in addressing a smart conversation on ethical sourcing practices and animal welfare.

This isn’t because foie gras is beyond criticism. It absolutely is not. The challenge is the complexity: Foie gras sits at the intersection of luxury, class signaling, moral absolutism, and food politics. The moment it becomes the opening move, no one feels heard, and everyone feels attacked.

That sets us all up for failure and division at a time when our community doesn’t need it.

Chefs are cast as decadent villains.
Activists are cast as moral absolutists chasing symbolic wins.
Policymakers are cast as governing for applause rather than outcomes.
Everyone sort of wants to bury each other, and no one really wins.
No meaningful change happens.
We resent each other more deeply.
Our city continues to drift to ideological corners—which is exactly what happens when citizens feel like they’re not being heard.

Is that what we really want?

Starting animal-welfare policy with a foie gras ban is like trying to fight climate change by banning plastic straws. The gesture is visible and emotionally satisfying, but wildly disconnected from where most harm actually occurs. It shifts responsibility onto small actors while leaving the largest and most harmful systems untouched. In that way I guess it’s also like launching public-health reform by banning Big Gulps while ignoring food deserts, school lunches, and access to fresh food. (By the way, a program in Portland that empowered chefs to teach students about such things would be a better use of our time and energy—wouldn’t that be cool?).

Anyway… foie gras bans tend to follow this same script. From the outside, foie is easy to paint as excessive, elitist, and cruel—making it an easy political target. (That’s especially striking given that, as I noted in my last article, only eight restaurants in Portland serve foie gras.) I would also suggest some independent research on the so-called foie “industry” cited by Councilors Jamie Dumphy, Mitch Green, and others. While there are indeed large industrial producers overseas and some “bad actors,” the domestic industry is very small, consisting of two primary producers that raise around 400,000 birds annually. Compare that to the nine billion commercially raised chickens which slaughter 24 million animals every single day.

It’s Shitty and Irresponsible to Single Out Chefs

Portland’s chefs are not casual participants in food systems. They are probably the city’s most ethically engaged actors, and people who helped build demand for local sourcing, higher-welfare practices, and small farms long before those ideas went mainstream.

That’s why starting the animal-welfare conversation by banning an ingredient served by fewer than ten restaurants feels so off-key to us food folk. It doesn’t feel like partnership. It feels like scapegoating, and it ignores all of the great work that chefs have done over the years in creating the scale that has allowed more people to enjoy great food.

The Activists Get Caricatured Too

I believe this same dynamic harms activists as well.

When activists choose a foie gras ban as their opening move, advocates are seen by the culinary community as uncompromising and naive moral absolutists chasing symbolic victories and choosing to not look at the bigger picture. Clearly this is also not true as many activists are also very informed on how food systems operate. Worthy of note: I was impressed by most of the feedback I received from animal rights advocates after my last piece.

We’ve seen how this ends.

New York City’s foie gras ban was tied up in litigation and ultimately annulled.
California’s ban has survived, but only after years of lawsuits and workarounds.Chicago’s ban famously backfired after chefs outwardly protested with decadent feasts until the ban was repealed outright.

The biggest learning of them all is this: None of these bans have produced a scalable model for animal-welfare reform, and none produced the good will that might find common ground in the community to make meaningful change. They created division, resentment, and a lot of legal bills.

The Deeper Problem: How We Now Start Conversations

This foie gras debate sits inside a much larger pattern, and this is why this whole thing has bothered me so much.

In politics, and increasingly in daily life, we live at a moment where we tend to begin our conversation from the extremes. Positions harden instantly. Compromise becomes impossible. And this division right now is the root of everything that ails Portland. It’s not that are leaders are not smart. It’s not that we do not have the resources to solve our problems. It’s that we lack the courage to retreat from our ideological fiefdoms, and we have stopped listening to one another.

And that is exactly how cities fail.

And for those who know Portland’s political history, what makes this moment especially striking is that it runs counter to our civic DNA.

Historically speaking, Portland and Oregon have at times been ahead of the curve civically not because they shouted the loudest, but because they experimented thoughtfully. Oregon was among the first states to embrace initiative and reform government. This, in part, contributed to a culture that helped open the door to changes that once seemed inconceivable. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, Portland’s civic imagination manifested again, and the city quite literally helped write the playbook for urban revival.

And here we are again, at another inflection point.

In a political moment defined by noise, the most radical thing our city could do is slow down, lower the temperature, and listen to one another.

And that won’t happen if we continually choose to start every conversation from the extremes.

By all accounts, Jamie Dumphy and Mitch Green (the architects of this ban) are both very smart people, and both tout their commitment to arts and culture in Portland. That’s why I would like to see them engage more deeply with the culinary community and be the civic advocates that, honestly, the culinary community has never had in Portland. That starts with allyship, and with a willingness to choose entry points to discussions that earn trust and lead to the best outcomes.

Maybe then we can actually have honest conversations about heated subjects like foie. This is what we should expect from our leaders.

Time to turn down the heat.