As the public face of the Animal Protection & Rescue League and a 12-year vegan, attorney Bryan Pease has campaigned in California in favor of nonlethal pest control, protection of seal habitat, a ban on veal, and a ban on foie gras. In January in Chicago he joined the anti-foie gras protests at Bin 36 and Cyrano’s Bistrot, trailed by a French TV crew doing a piece on Chicago’s duck-liver ordinance.
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In late 2003 Pease and two APRL comrades made their way into a Sonoma Foie Gras facility and filmed ducks being force-fed and a rat nosing around the rear ends of a pair of ducks, allegedly nibbling on them (it’s a little hard to tell). The three absconded with the birds and took them to a vet, who determined two had “large flesh wounds . . . evident on the tails” and were in poor health. He recommended one be euthanized.
In February 2005, not long after the California legislature banned the production of foie gras in California by 2012, both suits were settled. As part of the settlement Gonzalez had to pay $21,000 to cover the legal fees of In Defense of Animals.
I asked him whether Gonzalez could simply file his own anti-SLAPP motion.
