Written by PETA
If you had the same reaction that I did (i.e., violent retching) when you heard about KFC's hideously unhealthy Double Down (you know, the sandwich that replaced bread with fried chicken and forced you to think about all those globules of deadly gunk gumming up people's blood vessels), get this: A single egg yolk contains vastly more cholesterol than an entire Double Down. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.
With heart disease being the number one killer of Americans, the cholesterol-bomb egg industry has resorted to ever-more-desperate "move along, nothing to see here" tactics to try to pass the blame, but a new report in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology calls them out on their bull … uh, chicken poop. The take-away? Eating just one whole egg per day can double your risk of coronary disease.
Looking to break the egg habit? It's as easy as (eggless custard) pie—check out these tips and recipes!
Written by Jeff Mackey
On Saturday, Alexandria Mills of Louisville became the first American in two decades to win the Miss World crown. So what does that have to do with the PETA Files, dear reader? Well, proving that her beauty is far more than skin-deep, the new titleholder noted how ironic it was that the other contestants had nicknamed her "KFC." (Geddit? Since she's from Kentucky?) After all, she's a vegetarian.
The moral of the story? If you want to take on the world—or become Miss World—go veg to get an edge. Oh, and stay away from KFC—the chicken-abusing fast-food chain, that is, not the lovely Ms. Mills.
When graffiti king Banksy's "coyote" took on Colonel Sanders, we interpreted the work to be pro-chicken. But there's no question that artist Wayne Coyne, lead singer for The Flaming Lips, is speaking out against cruelty to birds with his new work. He assured fans that the blood used in the creation of a new poster was his own, stating, "We thought it would be silly to use some chicken blood or something like that. They don't need to sacrifice their vital fluids any more than I need to, so I thought, 'Well, let's just do it. We'll be the experiment.'"
The Flaming Lips have previously signed PETA's petition calling on KFC to eliminate some of the worst abuses endured by birds killed for its buckets. We like it when people speak up for chickens. Do you?
Written by Karin Bennett
In honor of 10/10/10, here are 10 easy ways to get active for animals this weekend and beyond:
And why stop at 10? There are a million more things you can do to help animals right now!
Written by Amy Skylark Elizabeth
When I was a kid, my parents would tuck me in at night, saying, "Don't let the bedbugs bite." But what had been a cute little saying has become a real nightmare for people facing a surge in bedbug populations. And like so many other problems, this one has a link to factory farming, as Allen Szalanski, an Arkansas University entomologist who is studying the current situation, explained. Szalanski, who was interviewed by the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, is quoted in the following excerpt from the newspaper:
The poultry industry also has become a sort of mass-transit system for the insect, [Szalanski] said. He's found millions of the bugs living on breeder birds, which are sent across the country. Poultry facilities "are so bad that if you walk in there even with a (protective suit), you'll still get bedbugs on you," he said. "Poultry workers could be moving bedbugs from one place to another."
The poultry industry also has become a sort of mass-transit system for the insect, [Szalanski] said. He's found millions of the bugs living on breeder birds, which are sent across the country.
Poultry facilities "are so bad that if you walk in there even with a (protective suit), you'll still get bedbugs on you," he said. "Poultry workers could be moving bedbugs from one place to another."
So if you want to have a "good night" and "sleep tight," it's time to kick the bucket and go vegan. After all, no one ever got bedbugs from broccoli or crabs from a carrot!
A slaughterhouse in Alabama owned by Pilgrim's Pride, a company that supplies chickens to KFC, has been slapped with a $135,000 fine for 29 safety violations, including citations for unmarked containers of hazardous materials, exposed batteries that posed a danger of caustic burns and electrical shocks, and an unsecured 150-pound drum of chlorine. A complaint about ammonia odors, tripping hazards, and cutting and stabbing injuries prompted the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct the investigation that led to the fine.
Alert PETA Files readers might recall PETA's investigation at a Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse in West Virginia, which produced evidence that workers were stomping on chickens, kicking them, ripping off their beaks and heads, slamming them against floors and walls, spitting tobacco into their eyes and mouths, and spray-painting their faces.
So I guess it shouldn't come as any surprise that a company that shows such little regard for the humane treatment of animals would also have little regard for worker safety. Just one more reason to stay away from Pilgrim's Pride enabler customer KFC.
Written by Alisa Mullins
After more than a year of stonewalling, KFC's hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, has finally gotten around to officially denying PETA's request for a permit to display our giant crippled chicken statue at a city intersection.
Over the past year, Louisville officials have devised various creative and ever-changing obstacles to PETA's application, including an imaginary "moratorium" on permits for public exhibits, a new requirement that adjacent property owners must approve of a public exhibit, a months-long delay in reviewing PETA's application, and other free-speech-trampling tactics that PETA believes were nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to prevent people from finding out how KFC suppliers abuse chickens.
Strangely, officials didn't seem to have any objection when KFC erected a giant bucket of fried chicken in a shopping mall.
Hmmm … sounds like a great spot for our chicken statue. Speaking of which, does anyone know a good pro bono attorney in Chickentown?
It's so hot in the city, you'd think I'd be making another batch of lemonade—but I've got a hankering for some Internet Soup. It's been a while since the last batch, so dig in!
Oof! I don't know about you, but I'm full after all that soup—and guac. This Special K needs a siesta. Until next time …
If you don't want people to start chanting, "Fatty, fatty two-by-four, can't fit through KFC's door," you might want to put down that drumstick and pick up some Gardein buffalo wings instead. A recent study of hundreds of thousands of Europeans revealed that the more meat people ate, the more weight they gained over time—and chicken is the big culprit.
This is important to tell everyone: Researchers found that the people who were most likely to gain weight were also those who ate the most chicken, followed by processed meats and red meat.
Researchers at Imperial College London in the U.K. found that people who ate more meat gained about a pound a year on average, even if they consumed the same amount of calories as people who ate less meat. And most meat-eaters eat far more calories than do vegetarians or vegans. And predictably, the more meat people ate, the more weight they gained. For every additional 8.8 ounces of meat that people ate daily, they packed on about four and a half extra pounds over five years.
"Our results suggest that a decrease in meat consumption may improve weight management," wrote the study's authors in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Hurry—surf on over to GoVeg.com and order a copy of our vegetarian/vegan starter kit today, before you end up looking like this.
Here's a toxic tidbit from the "Gross Meat Facts" files: Chickens who are raised for their flesh are routinely given feed laced with Roxarsone, an additive that contains—are you ready for this—arsenic. May we suggest a new slogan for the nugget bucket? "Potent poison in every piece!"
The fact is, roughly 70 percent of the chickens who are raised for their flesh in the U.S. are fed arsenic-laced feed. (Like antibiotics, arsenic is believed to speed growth and produce more meat to sell, quicker.) The chicken industry insists that most of the arsenic is eliminated in the chickens' waste (tough luck for fish in nearby waterways), but a recent study conducted by the Utah Department of Health revealed that it is also excreted in chickens' eggs. This was discovered after two children who ate eggs daily from the family's hens (who had been given feed containing Roxarsone) were found to have arsenic levels in their bloodstream that were at least twice the level deemed toxic.
It's also in chickens' flesh, according to a study conducted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), an organization that is petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban arsenic feed additives. The IATP found that all the fast-food chicken and more than half of the store-bought chicken tested contained elevated levels of arsenic. High arsenic levels have been linked to certain cancers as well as immune system, endocrine, and neurological problems.
I guess now we know why the Colonel is so anxious to keep his recipe a secret.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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