PORTLAND – Animal activists seeking legislation to outlaw foie gras in Maine have begun their campaign by demonstrating outside upscale restaurants in Portland where the expensive French delicacy is served.

Members of the Maine Animal Coalition have been gathering on recent Friday nights in a tiny park in the Old Port district outside Natasha’s, where patrons may dine on the patio.

The demonstrators carried signs reading “Foie Gras is Cruel” and “No Foie Gras in Our Town.”

The activists’ concern focuses on the way ducks are force-fed to produce foie gras, which means “fatty liver” in French. Brochures handed to passers-by show farm workers trying to fatten matted-looking, glazed-eyed ducks by sliding gruel through metal pipes down their gullets.

Chicago has banned the sale of foie gras in restaurants following a similar campaign, and California is scheduled to do so by 2012.

The two-hour protests at Maine restaurants have drawn two to 20 people at a time, according to the Maine Animal Coalition.

No more than about 40 Maine restaurants serve foie gras, said Richard Grotton of the Maine Restaurant Association, and some put it on the menu only sporadically.

The luxury item, usually going for $13 to $16 for a seared slice, may add instant sumptuousness to a restaurant, but rarely does it make a profit.

Natasha Durham, owner and namesake of the restaurant targeted by the Maine Animal Coalition, said she agrees with its goals. Even before the protesters showed up on her doorstep Aug. 4, Durham said she planned to permanently phase out foie gras this fall because she is concerned about how it is produced.

But her failure to respond to the groups’ letters prompted protesters to show up every Friday night for the past six weeks. They also want foie gras off the menu at her other restaurant, Mim’s, but executive chef Joe Boudreau, who has control over the menu, has yet to make a decision.

Sam Hayward, owner of Fore Street, said he is torn over the controversy. He refuses to buy foie gras from the three major American producers. Instead, he has turned to a Montreal-area farmer who, he said, raises ducks on a much smaller scale than American farms, reducing the possibility for illness and congestion that lead to stress in the birds.

Hayward said he agrees with the overall objectives of the protesters but wishes they would focus on conditions at industrial farms for chickens, hogs and cattle.

“I think there are much bigger targets that would go a lot further in eliminating animal suffering around the world,” Hayward said.

While she condemns factory farming, Maine Animal Coalition campaign organizer Iris Michaud sees foie gras as a separate issue.

“It’s a completely different thing to force-feed animals to the point where their livers explode, where they die of organ ruptures, where their livers expand 10 times,” said Michaud.

Foie gras producers say the animal activists are grossly misinformed. Guillermo Gonzalez of California-based Sonoma Foie Gras said his ducks walk freely for about two months. In the last two weeks of their lives, they are housed 12 ducks to a pen measuring 33 square feet, where they are fed twice a day.

The idea, he said is to replicate what ducks do in the wild: gorge before migration to store fat.

“In nature, they will not eat or overeat to the point that they will be so heavy that they will not be able to fly,” Gonzalez said. “But we are, as with other species raised for food, using built-in mechanisms for commercial purposes. I don’t deny that.”

The protesters say they plan to move on to other restaurants and demonstrate into winter if necessary, but the jury is still out on whether the protests will win converts.

Durham said Natasha’s business is up by 16 percent from this time last year, and her foie gras sales are up by 300 percent.

“People are walking by the protesters and saying, ‘I didn’t know Natasha’s serves foie gras’ and come in,” she said.