PETA WINS "WICKED WENDY’S" CAMPAIGN


Fast-Food Restaurant Agrees to Improve Animal Welfare Standards

Wendy's has raised the white flag after being bombarded by PETA's "Wicked Wendy’s" Campaign, which involved provocative ads (including a billboard featuring little "Wicked Wendy" as a bloody butcher), support from Babe star James Cromwell, who was arrested during the campaign kick-off demonstration in McLean, Va., and numerous other "counter attacks"—protests in which activists climbed atop and turned the Wendy’s order counter into a soapbox—resulting in dozens of arrests at Wendy’s restaurants nationwide. The fast-food giant confirmed that it will meet the animal welfare standards that PETA negotiated with McDonald’s and Burger King.

Wendy’s has promised to:

• conduct unannounced inspections of its slaughterhouses and take action against those facilities that fail the inspections

• institute humane catching guidelines for chickens that will drastically reduce the number of broken bones caused by rough handling

• require suppliers to give laying hens a minimum of 72 square inches of cage space

• stop purchasing from suppliers who force-molt (starve chickens in order to force them into laying more eggs)

• immediately require suppliers to adopt air-quality guidelines for chickens

• improve chicken slaughter methods by increasing the voltage in electric stun baths

• work to develop alternative housing systems for sows

• immediately apply the above standards to its Canadian operations

A new campaign target will be selected in the coming weeks; grocery story chains, such as Wal-Mart and Kroger, or chicken restaurants, such as Churches or Chick-fil-A, are being considered.

For more information, including video footage of animals in factory-farm conditions, visit PETA’s WickedWendy’s.com Web site.

For all the details about PETA’s victories over McDonald’s and
Burger King, please visit www.McCruelty.com and www.MurderKing.com. A few
of the highlights include:
• Both corporations will conduct unannounced inspections of their chicken, pig and cow slaughterhouses.

• Both corporations will refuse to purchase from suppliers that “force-molt” hens, which involves starving the animals for up to two weeks to shock their bodies into another
laying cycle.

• Both corporations are requiring changes in the stifling, ammonia-laden conditions that plague battery sheds and are setting maximum hen numbers for cages, which will guarantee that hens are not climbing on top of one another trying to reach food, as happens in most sheds now.
• Both corporations will share all of their advancements with their competitors in order to make it easier to implement the changes industrywide.