NEWSBYANNIE HARTNETT

Do or Dine, a new restaurant in Brooklyn, has added foie gras-filled donuts to their menu, and has thus quickly made it onto the map as the worst place for pastries. The restaurant plans to have the goose-liver donuts on its menu Wednesday through Saturday, charging a whopping $11 for each cruelty-filled donut.

One recent Do or Dine diner called the restaurant "heaven," but foie gras donuts mean a real-life hell for birds. Foie gras, which literally translates to "fatty liver," is produced by force-feeding waterfowl with pounds of grain and fat. This force-feeding process is known as "gavage," and it involves thrusting a metal feeding tube down the bird's throat several times a day.

The gavage process sometimes results in holes in a bird's sensitive neck, and the bird's engorged liver often becomes diseased. The birds are kept in filthy, crammed conditions while they wait to be force-fed.

Dunkin' Donuts has disappointed animal lovers in recent years. Not only did Dunkin' introduce meat-munckins in 2010, but the donut shop has refused to switch to cage-free eggs, despite numerous pleas from animal welfare groups.

It looked like the donut chain might go cage-free back in 2009, after animal protection group Compassion Over Killing exposed the cruelties committed by a factory farm company called Michael Foods, one of the egg suppliers to Dunkin' Donuts. The video includes footage of hens kept in cages without access to food or water, decomposed hens left in cages with live birds, and an employee decapitating a bird.

After the video was released, Dunkin' Donuts stated that they were researching cage-free egg options. Unfortunately, since that limp promise in 2009, animal protection groups haven't heard a peep from Dunkin' Donuts.

Top Chef Canada’s first episode scored the highest ratings ever for a Canadian premiere, but the show is on thin ice with animal lovers. The first season of the Canadian cooking show has already dished up horse meat, seal flipper, and several foie gras dishes.

"I didn't think [the horse meat] was that big of a deal," Top Chef contestant Dale Mackay shrugged in his video blog, after waxing poetic about his foie gras poutine. "Obviously some people feel completely differently, and don't want to see horse meat on Top Chef or on TV in general."

Indeed, over 3,000 Change.org users have signed Animal Law Coalition's petition demanding Top Chef Canada never to serve horse meat again, and over 6,200 Facebook users have joined a boycott against the show.

Wegmans is a well-known supermarket, with nearly 80 stores scattered across the Mid-Atlantic region. Wegmans brags that their name "strikes fear into the hearts of [competitor] supermarket owners."

I can't speak for Price Chopper or Hannaford, but I am happy to report that geese and ducks can be less afraid of Wegmans' name this week: The supermarket elected to remove foie gras from the menu at three in-store cooking classes in New York and Pennsylvania.

Foie gras is created by force-feeding ducks or geese systematically through a metal tube in order to create diseased, fatty livers. The cruelty of foie gras production is well-documented. Wegmans' spokeswoman Jo Natale reported that the foie gras was removed after customers contacted the company “asking us to reconsider that dish on the menu.”

No one ever said Harvard students were bird brains.

For years, Harvard students have campaigned for cage-free eggs in the dining halls. And this year the campaign has really taken flight: volunteers gathered over 7,000 signatures on a petition for cage-free eggs by going door-to-door on campus.

Back in 2007, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) agreed to substitute some eggs from battery-cage farms with cage-free eggs. Unfortunately, the dining halls continue to use battery-cage eggs for recipes and for the liquid eggs used in making omelets and scrambled eggs. And, despite the recent student lobbying, HUDS has elected to keep serving up approximately 650,000 caged-eggs a year.

On Monday, May 16th, the reality TV show Top Chef Canada aired an episode titled "The French Feast," during which one contestant was asked to prepare a dish using horse meat.

The inclusion of Mr. Ed on the menu has animal lovers rearing. As the show aired, a Facebook group sprang up in protest: "Boycott Top Chef — Protect the Horses." The group has already gained more than 5,600 followers.

In response to the backlash, Top Chef Canada also turned to Facebook to defend its use of the grisly meat. They issued a statement on their own page: "The challenge in this episode involves having the competitors create a truly authentic, traditional French menu. One of the most traditional French foods is horse meat. Horse meat is also considered a delicacy in many cultures around the world."

Good news for our woolly friends: Massachusetts General Hospital has recently agreed to stop using live sheep in its Advanced Trauma Life Support courses.

The compassionate decision came after a long campaign from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, with added pressure from a Change.org petition. PCRM celebrated the recent announcement, calling it a "monumental achievement."

Massachusetts General Hospital will now use simulators in its trauma training, joining 95 percent of medical centers that use non-animal based methods of training.  There's only a few stragglers left in the United States that still use animals for trauma training, and only one ATLS course in Massachusetts that still uses live animals: Baystate Medical Center.

With the Kentucky Derby behind us, many people are now betting on whether or not Animal Kingdom, the winner of the Derby, has what it takes to win the Triple Crown. Others are saving their gambling for the poker table, and are instead thinking about the future of the horses.

Secretariat actor James Cromwell is one of those who are truly rooting for the horses. Cromwell has recently written to The Jockey Club urging it to adopt PETA's Thoroughbred 360 Lifecycle Retirement Fund.

PETA's proposed program would require horse owners to contribute $360 every time they register a new horse, and these fees would fund the care of retired racehorses. The fund could generate over 20 million dollars a year, and would be, as Ecorazzi put it: "like Social Security for horses."

Over the weekend, the Four Seasons Resort in Maui hosted a $350-per-person dinner, a luxury four-course meal featuring wine from Opus One Winery. I'm sure the wines from 1981 were perfection, but I'm more excited about what wasn't on the menu: the first course was originally slated to be foie gras, sourced from Hudson Valley, California. Foie gras is the cruelest appetizer, made by force-feeding ducks and geese several times a day using a metal feeding tube.

But Opus One Wine Dinner guests didn't have to choke down the foie gras poutine last night, thanks to the Animal Protection & Rescue League. The Four Seasons received a request from APRL, asking the hotel to rethink the inclusion of foie gras on the event's menu. And, lucky ducks, the Four Seasons' Master Chef agreed to remove the cruel pâté. 

Editor's Note: We've received great news from The Humane Society of the United States regarding Marriott: "The company has been working on farm animal welfare issues for quite some time and has made positive progress by already switching many of its locations to cage-free eggs." HSUS attended Marriott's shareholder meeting today to commend the company's progress on animal welfare and says they're "confident that [Marriott is] going to make even further inroads soon and help literally thousands of animals."

Thank you, Marriott and Hyatt, for setting an example in the hotel industry, and to HSUS and all the Change.org members who tirelessly fight to give animals a better life.

The best part of staying in a hotel has always been the free continental breakfast.

Now, at all Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, that complimentary breakfast has gotten even better. The hotel chain has recently announced its plan to switch all of the eggs it uses to the kinder, cage-free variety. The Hyatt Hotels serve breakfast to over 10 million guests per year, and serve 2.4 million eggs per year.

The Humane Society of the United States applauded Hyatt for giving chickens a little breathing room: “By switching to exclusively cage-free shell eggs at all of its locations, Hyatt is improving the lives of animals and ensuring a safer food supply."