It may be a food redolent of luxurious indulgence, but that has not stopped one of the world’s most opulent department stores from purging it from its food hall.

Harvey Nichols, purveyor of Britain’s more exclusive foodstuffs, has announced that it is to stop selling foie gras after a meeting with animal rights activists and a campaign of store-front protests.

The move has prompted connoisseurs to speculate that if even Harvey Nichols, beloved of the rich of pocket and palate, has abandoned foie gras, then the Gascon delicacy must be in dire straits indeed.

The Knightsbridge department store joins a long line of retailers that have taken the pâté off their shelves.

The store cited commercial reasons for the move, which campaigners seized on as proof that consumers were turning against it and top-range department stores are now under increasing pressure to follow suit.

Animal rights activists say that the foie gras industry relies on cruelty to the birds, ducks and geese, that have their livers swollen to up to ten times their normal size by a process of force-feeding, known as gavage.

The groups say that they routinely find dying geese and ducks in farms, often with holes in their necks.

This year has been a bad one for a delicacy that has earned a reputation as the most decadent of foodstuffs.

Dozens of outlets have banned the food, including House of Fraser and Jenners, the prestigious Edinburgh department store.

At the other end of the market, Makro, the cash-and-carry, said last month that it would no longer sell the product.

This year a councillor in York vied to follow the example of Chicago and make the city Britain’s first foie gras-free zone and failed because it was not considered to be in the authority’s remit.

Arnold Schwarzenegger passed a law in California phasing it out, and 138 MPs have signed an early day motion calling for a ban.

Ben Bradshaw, as Environment Minister, put the boot in when he called for a consumer-led boycott in February.

Noemie Ventura, the foie gras campaign manager for the charity People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), said that the group is targeting the department stores it sees as the last refuge of the product.

“We met Harvey Nichols, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason. We showed them video footage of geese in a foie gras farm, which we left with them. It’s the worst cruelty I’ve seen. And the cruelty is happening because of the retailers.”

Production of foie gras has already been banned in Britain, but European free-trade legislation means its sale cannot easily be prohibited.

It continues to fetch premium prices. Fortnum & Mason charges £60 for a 310g goose liver, which is enough to make starters for four or five people.

Supporters of the trade say a ban would take away diners’ freedom of choice and decimate the 15,000 farms in France that produce more than 75 per cent of the world’s foie gras.

But statistics suggest that Britain no longer has the stomach it once did for the delicacy.

By 2004 it was estimated that Britain consumed 50 tonnes of foie gras annually – a tiny proportion of the 20,000 tonnes produced around the world each year – and is reckoned to have slumped still further after bans by supermarkets and department stores.

Giles Coren, the Times food writer, praised the move. “It’s a lazy, lazy way for a half-competent chef to make his food seem flash,” he said. “If rich plutocrats have to go down the All Saints Road to buy it off scary blokes with knives, then all the better.”

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