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Amber Canavan, an animal rights activist and recent SUNY ESF graduate, will serve a 30-day jail sentence in Sullivan County after pleading guilty to trespassing at a foie gras farm.

(Via theirturn.net)

Two missing ducks. Thirty to 45 days in jail. One Hollywood star.

Actor James Cromwell in 2008.

Syracuse animal rights activist Amber Canavan is going to have plenty of company Tuesday when she reports to a Catskills-area jail to serve a sentence for trespassing at a farm that makes the controversial delicacy, foie gras.

As she enters the Sullivan County Courthouse in Monticello around 3 p.m., Canavan will be greeted by members of Syracuse Animal Rights Organization and People for the Ethical Treatment Animals.

The rally in Canavan's support will be led by actor James Cromwell, perhaps best known for his role as Farmer Hoggett in the 1995 pig-on-a-farm film "Babe."

"I don't have any choice, obviously (in going to jail)," Canavan said today. "But unfortunately getting this kind of human interest in the news is sometimes the only way to bring attention to the plight of these animals."

Canavan, Cromwell and the other activists will use the occasion to call attention to what they say is the cruel and inhumane method used to make foie gras, or fatted liver. It's made by force-feeding grain to ducks or geese, sometimes by inserting metal tubes down the birds' throats. The forced feeding enlarges the liver.

"As someone who has been arrested for speaking up for animals, I have the utmost respect for Amber Canavan's dedication to exposing the cruelty of force-feeding ducks for foie gras," Cromwell said in statement released by PETA. "It is my honor to join PETA and the Syracuse Animal Rights Organization as we wish this brave activist a safe and speedy sentence."

Canavan, 29, pleaded guilty earlier this month to a misdemeanor charge of second-degree criminal trespass. It stems from a night in 2011 when she and an unnamed fellow activist entered Hudson Valley Foie Gras in Ferndale and recorded a video of the ducks kept there.

Canavan, who graduated from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in May, had initially faced a felony charge of burglary. That was reduced to her plea.

In making the plea, Canavan was required to explain what she did and saw on the farm. That gave her the ability to testify in open court about it.

"I testified in court, under oath, to the horrible things being done to these animals," she said. "So that's on the official record."

In the video Canavan helped create, the narrator says two ducks were "rescued," which led to the initial burglary charge. In later statements, she also said she entered an "open" barn to shoot the video. The video appears to show the ducks being loaded in a bin to be removed from the farm.

"I knew I was taking a risk when I spoke up about what I saw," she told the New York Times in February, "And if it provides any relief for the ducks that are still there, it's going to be worth it."

Hudson Valley Foie Gras is the country's leading producer of the duck liver. The company denies it treats ducks with cruelty, arguing, among other things, that they are protected from the weather in spacious cage-free barns.

"She's a thief," Marcus Henley, the foie gras company's operations manager, told the New York Times.

The activists supporting Canavan have a different view.

"What goes on behind the door of this farm would be considered extreme cruelty by most people," said Ashley Byrne, a PETA campaign specialist who will be at the rally in Monticello.

Canavan, formerly Amber Coon, has a long history of activism and protest in Syracuse. Post-Standard archives show her participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests in downtown Syracuse in 2012; protesting hydrofracking in 2010; and protesting outside Giorgio's Furs on South Salina Street in 2003.

She joined a protest against the serving of foie gras at the former L'Adour Restaurant in downtown Syracuse in 2008, and as recently as December organized a carpool from Syracuse to protest foie gras on the menu at a restaurant called Coltivare in Ithaca.

Canavan said once she gets out of jail, she will continue to pursue environmental activism, making use of her degree in environmental studies. She and her husband are likely to move to the Pacific Northwest.

"I will be an activist all my life," she said. "Looking at the videos (of animals being force-fed) is difficult, but imagine how much more difficult it is for these animals to endure what they're going through."