Question: For how many days and how often are the ducks force fed?
About the article "Peking duck", section "Raising the duck".

Candidate passages:
Raising the duck.
The ducks used to prepare Peking Duck originated in Nanjing.
They were small, had black feathers, and lived in the canals around the city linking major waterways.
With the relocation of the Chinese capital to Beijing, supply barge traffic increased in the area.
Often these barges would spill grain into the canals, providing food for the ducks.
By the Five Dynasties, the new species of duck had been domesticated by Chinese farmers.
Nowadays, Peking Duck is prepared from the Pekin duck ("Anas platyrhynchos domestica").
Newborn ducks are raised in a free range environment for the first 45 days of their lives, and force fed 4 times a day for the next 15–20 days, resulting in ducks that weigh 5–7 kg (11–15 lbs).
The force feeding of the ducks led to an alternate name for the dish, Peking Stuffed Duck ().
Ducks have been farmed for thousands of years, possibly starting in Southeast Asia.
In the Western world, they are not as popular as the chicken, because chickens have much more white lean meat and are easier to keep confined, making the total price much lower for chicken meat, whereas duck is comparatively expensive.
While popular in "haute cuisine", duck appears less frequently in the mass-market food industry and restaurants in the lower price range.
However, ducks are more popular in China and there they are raised extensively.
Ducks are farmed for their meat, eggs, and down.
A minority of ducks are also kept for "foie gras" production.
In Vietnam, their blood is used in a food called "tiết canh".
Their eggs are blue-green to white, depending on the breed.
Ducks can be kept free range, in cages, in barns, or in batteries.
To be healthy, ducks should be allowed access to water, though battery ducks are often denied this.
They should be fed a grain and insect diet.
It is a popular misconception that ducks should be fed bread; bread has limited nutritional value and can be deadly when fed to developing ducklings.
Ducks should be monitored for avian influenza, as they are especially prone to infection with the dangerous H5N1 strain.
The females of many breeds of domestic ducks are unreliable at sitting their eggs and raising their young.
Notable exceptions include the Rouen Duck and especially the Muscovy Duck.
It has been a custom on farms for centuries to put duck eggs under broody hens for hatching; nowadays incubators are often used.
However, young ducklings rely on their mothers for a supply of preen oil to make them waterproof; a chicken hen does not make as much preen oil as a female duck, and an incubator makes none.
Once the duckling grows its own feathers, it will produce preen oil from the sebaceous gland near the base of its tail. 
Geese and ducks are omnivorous, and, like many birds, have expansive throats allowing them to store large amounts of food, either whole or pre-digested, in the crop, an enlarged portion of the esophagus, while awaiting digestion in the stomach, similar to python feeding.
In the wild this dilation allows them to swallow large foodstuffs, such as a whole fish, for a later, long digestion.
Wild geese may consume 300 grams of protein and another 800 grams of grasses per day.
Farmed geese allowed to graze on carrots adapt to eating 100 grams of protein, but may consume up to 2500 grams of the carrots per day.
A wild duck may double its weight in the autumn, storing fat throughout much of its body and especially on the liver, in preparation for winter migration.
Force-feeding produces a liver that is six to ten times its ordinary size.
Storage of fat in the liver produces steatosis of the liver cells.
The geese or ducks used in foie gras production are usually kept in a building on straw for the first four weeks, then kept outside for some weeks, feeding on grasses.
This phase of the preparation is designed to take advantage of the natural dilation capacity of the esophagus.
The birds are then brought inside for gradually longer periods while introduced to a high starch diet.
The next feeding phase, which the French call "gavage" or "finition d'engraissement", or "completion of fattening", involves forced daily ingestion of controlled amounts of feed for 12 to 15 days with ducks and for 15 to 18 days with geese.
During this phase ducks are usually fed twice daily while geese are fed up to 4 times daily.
In order to facilitate handling of ducks during gavage, these birds are typically housed in individual cages or small group pens during this phase. 
The report of the European Union's Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare on Welfare Aspects of the Production of Foie Gras in Ducks and Geese, adopted on December 16, 1998, is an 89-page review of studies from several producing countries.
It examines several indicators of animal welfare, including physiological indicators, liver pathology, and mortality rate.
It strongly concludes that "force feeding, as currently practised, is detrimental to the welfare of the birds.
"Members of the committee describe how geese and ducks show "avoidance behaviour indicating aversion for the person who feeds them and the feeding procedure".
Although the committee reported that there is no "conclusive" scientific evidence on the aversive nature of force feeding, and that evidence of injury is "small", in their overall recommendations, the committee stated that "the management and housing of the birds used for producing foie gras have a negative impact on their welfare".
On physiology, the report finds that based on studies available, "no definite conclusions can be drawn concerning the physiological activity of birds in response to force feeding" because although "force feeding induced hepatic steatosis in the duck or goose", "hepatic steatosis in the waterfowl is a normal metabolic response" and there was a low incidence of disease indicating lesions.
If gavage is stopped the "return to normal took approximately four weeks".
As an economic indicator the report states "it is strongly in the interest of the farmer" to avoid disease as the "resulting fat liver is of no commercial value".
It summarizes that "some pathologists consider this level of steatosis to be pathological but others do not" and recommends that research "should be carried out into methods of producing fat liver which do not require the use of force feeding".
The EU report notes that continued force feeding leads to early death of the animal, and the birds are typically slaughtered just at the point that mortality would drastically increase from the force feeding.
In the studies it examined, "the mortality rate in force fed birds varies from 2% to 4% in the two week force feeding period compared with around 0.2% in comparable ducks".
On the force feeding process, the EU committee examined several experiments carried out by INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) to detect pain or distress by looking at blood hormones, and found that no definite conclusions can be drawn from these studies.
Other studies looked at behavioral aversion to the feeding process and found that force fed ducks avoided the feeding pen when given a choice, whereas a majority of the control group not being force fed would enter the feeding pen voluntarily.
Daily hand-feeding of ducks and geese is normally associated with a positive response by the animals towards the person feeding them.
In contrast, the working group observed that ducks and geese in a pen kept away from their force feeder when he entered the room.
In an unpublished pilot experiment by INRA, ducks in cages reportedly displayed less avoidance behaviour to the force feeder’s visit than to the visit of a neutral person coming along the cages later.
However, in the working group's own observations, "Ducks in cages had little opportunity to show avoidance but sometimes moved their heads away from the person who was about to force feed them.
"The report also recommends collection of additional data regarding the health of the animals, feeding methods, animal housing, and socio-economic factors. 
The play is focused around two old men who randomly meet on a park bench.
Although it is usually played that the two men do not know of each other, (the stage directions are ambiguious—they could meet, or they could be old friends) they awkwardly begin to talk to each other.
As they fumble for topics to speak upon, somehow they always end up reverting to the ducks swimming around in the lake.
Although their conversations seem misguided, as they talk about the ducks, many wise conversations are actually discussed.
They talk about the leader of the ducks, and how every other duck follows that leader.
When the leader duck dies, then a new leader must be chosen.
They also talk about how everything the ducks do has a purpose.
Within the dialog of the men, they talk about why things occur naturally, friendship, and death, not only in reference to the ducks, but also in human nature.