To force-feed is to make a person or animal swallow food against their will — for example, by pouring liquid feed down the throat or passing a tube into the stomach. In medicine, involuntary feeding of competent adults who refuse food raises profound ethical and legal issues and is generally permitted only under court order or mental-health legislation, such as in the treatment of severe anorexia or in hunger-strike cases. In animal production, force-feeding has a notorious application in foie gras, where ducks or geese are tube-fed to enlarge their livers — a practice banned in several countries on welfare grounds. The term always carries coercion: voluntary tube feeding prescribed with consent is described instead as enteral nutrition.