Written by Jeff Mackey
PETA made sure that attendees at this week's annual meeting of KFC's parent company, Yum! Brands, in Louisville, Kentucky, would have something to chew on besides their cruelly obtained drumsticks and wings.
As shareholders of Yum! Brands stock, PETA can attend the company's annual meeting and ask a question during the Q&A. So Yum! bigwigs and stockholders got an earful from PETA when it detailed how chickens used to supply KFC restaurants spend their entire short lives mired in their own waste in cramped filthy sheds on factory farms, only to be hung upside down, sustain broken wings and legs, and often end up scalded to death in slaughterhouse defeathering tanks. PETA's representative then asked when the company will make the simple, badly needed changes that were recommended by KFC's own animal welfare advisers (who understandably resigned in frustration).
Join Pink, Sir Paul McCartney, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Black Eyed Peas, and many others in telling KFC to do right by chickens.
Hey, Soul Sister! PETA has sent an urgent letter to the rock band Train urging the group to cancel their performance at KFC's franchisee convention in San Antonio—or else face the music from PETA supporters—because of KFC's refusal to stop its suppliers' cruelty to chickens.
Many of the top names in music have taken a strong public stand against KFC, including Sir Paul McCartney, Pink, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Chrissie Hynde. Let's hope that Train gets on board, too, but if they take KFC's dirty money, they must carry the company's baggage—and PETA will protest their show.
Even those of us who are not quite famous can tell KFC to take cruelty to chickens off the menu. Sign Pink's petition demanding that KFC require its suppliers to stop abusing birds (and don't eat at its restaurants until it agrees).
Written by Michelle Kretzer
How do you convince lawmakers to turn a blind eye to the devastating effect that fast food has on our health? If you're McDonald's, you spend more than $1.1 million (in 2011 alone) lobbying political representatives. YUM! Brands, the owner of KFC, wasn't far behind, at $845,000.
The Center for Responsive Politics reports that the food industry "has been fighting Congress in recent years over nutritional requirements, labeling information and advertising. Fast food restaurants in particular have faced pressure due to their aggressive marketing aimed at children."
So, McDonald's and KFC both have about a cool mil lying around that they could put toward switching to controlled-atmosphere killing, a slaughter method that would prevent chickens from having their throats cut while still conscious and often being scalded to death in defeathering tanks. But instead, both companies spent it asking politicians to play fast and loose with Americans' health.
Click here to tell McDonald's and here to tell KFC that you're hatin' the way that they torture chickens. I think I know where they can find a tidy sum of cash to get started making changes.
Written by PETA
McDonald's has kicked its PR machine into high gear after a terrific undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals at Sparboe Farms, one of McDonald's primary egg suppliers, revealed that workers grabbed hens by the throat and slammed them into cages, that an employee swung a hen by her feet, that male chicks were tossed into plastic bags to suffocate, that rotting corpses of hens were left in cages with live birds, and other horrendous abuses.
In response, McDonald's announced that it will stop buying eggs from Sparboe Farms. Hang on, though—don't let McDonald's PR move lead you to believe that this will make a real difference for animals. We've seen it before. What Mercy for Animals uncovered is business as usual for factory farms, as countless PETA investigations, even of other McDonald's suppliers, have shown.
One example: A 2007 PETA investigation of a Union City, Tennessee, slaughterhouse that supplies McDonald's with much of its chicken flesh revealed that employees yanked birds out of shackles so aggressively that they broke the birds' legs, amused themselves by forcing as many as six chickens into a shackle that was designed for one bird, and forcefully slammed chickens against shackles. The electrified water bath that is supposed to stun chickens before their throats are cut was not working for two days, and slaughterhouse operators knowingly allowed tens of thousands of chickens to have their throats slit while the birds were still conscious.
It isn't good enough for McDonald's to simply switch to buying eggs from another lousy supplier with no stricter standards of "care" than the previous cruel supplier. On filthy, intensive-confinement farms—which describes every one of McDonald's and KFC's suppliers—hens are crammed into feces-filled wire cages with less space than a sheet of paper for each bird, and chicks' beaks are burned off without painkillers.
What consumers must demand are meaningful reforms and an end to the worst abuses suffered by the chickens killed for McDonald's and KFC. Here's one way to help chickens: Encourage the chains to switch to a less-cruel slaughter method called "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK). All the abuses that chickens suffer in slaughterhouses would be eliminated if McDonald's required its suppliers to switch to CAK, because with CAK, the birds are dead before they are shackled, bled, and scalded in defeathering tanks. Yet McDonald's and KFC have dragged their feet for years instead of switching methods, even though CAK is approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and even though McDonald's European suppliers adopted this method years ago.
Buyer beware: If you eat at McDonald's or KFC, you're eating food created via extreme cruelty to animals. Please boycott these companies and click here to tell them that you're not lovin' their chicken abuse.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Tired of going through racks of Halloween costumes and seeing the same old hockey masks and sexy nurse uniforms? Here are six scary DIY costumes guaranteed to make the most fearless revelers do a double-take—and then think twice about eating meat, wearing fur, or going to the circus.
Steal an idea from PETA Vice President Dan Mathews and go as KFC's purveyor of live-chicken scalding, Colonel Sanders.
Instantly transform into bunny butcher Donna Karan by carrying some plush rabbits drenched in red paint. To complete the ensemble, lie all night about how you don't really use fur even while you're holding the evidence.
Clowns are scary to a lot of people, and Ronald McDonald is one of the scariest of all. Follow in Andy Dick's footsteps and wave around a bloody knife as you illustrate how a chicken becomes a McNugget. (Hint: It's a lot more cruel than it has to be because McDonald's refuses to implement a less cruel slaughter method for chickens.)
If you want the theme to your outfit to be "cold as ice," be a Canadian seal clubber. A plush seal, a club, and a red-stained shirt will have anyone with a heartbeat running and screaming for points south of the Great White North.
If splashy is more your style, don a top hat and tails or a tight Lycra jumpsuit and you can be a Ringling Bros. animal trainer abuser. It works best if accessorized with a bullhook and paired with a partner dressed as a helpless baby elephant.
For women who want to show that fur is a bad asset, pair a Sasquatch suit with two strategically placed pillows and a diva attitude to become Jennifer Lopez. Be sure to brag about how you burn through animals like you burn through husbands.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
© Robyn Mackenzie/Dreamstime.com
"If shopping could cure breast cancer, it would be cured by now," says Think Before You Pink, an organization dedicated to ending "pinkwashing"—slapping pink ribbons on products in order to convince consumers that they can end breast cancer by buying pink products. In truth, reports Forbes, corporations seek to profit off consumers' strong feelings about breast cancer while simultaneously marketing products that actually contribute to the disease.
Such was the case with KFC's cancer-linked chicken, sold in "Buckets for the Cure," which, adding insult to injury, didn't really raise much money for cancer research, either, as is often the case with pinkwashing campaigns. And what little money makes it to breast cancer research frequently goes to support antiquated, unreliable experiments on animals.
I lost the person I was closest to in the world—my grandmother—to breast cancer, but I know that no matter how many pink sun visors I buy, it is unlikely that I am doing much to help with the search for a cure. Women deserve better than greedy corporations throwing a few pennies at a charity in exchange for huge profit margins. We deserve better than having our money spent on experiments that have proved to be useless. We deserve a cure, and the only way to find one is to stop buying pink doohickeys and start supporting breast cancer research that works—cutting-edge, effective, non-animal research.
For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, please look at PETA's list of cruelty-free charities and join us in supporting breast cancer research that really works.
Last weekend, a flock of really "angry birds" showed that green pigs aren't the enemy—the Colonel is. The birds landed at a San Jose, California, KFC to make the point that the fast-food chain's suppliers use a cruel method of slaughter in which chickens have their throats cut while they're still conscious and millions of birds are scalded to death in defeathering tanks. When one passerby heard about this, she vowed never to eat at KFC again.
Because the voltage levels of electric stun tanks in U.S. slaughterhouses are kept at only a fraction of the level needed to render chickens insensible to pain, birds are usually paralyzed but still conscious when their throats are cut. Government studies show that birds feel pain after being shocked, even if they can't move. If the birds miss the mechanical cutting blade, they are alive when they are immersed in tanks of scalding-hot water intended to remove their feathers after they are dead.
Tell KFC that until it agrees to switch to the less cruel slaughter method that PETA is recommending—which is already in use in other slaughterhouses—it can take a flying leap.
Aaron Jamison, the terminally ill Oregon man who approached his cancer with a wry sense of acceptance, has died. He left the world with grace, humor, and purpose.
When PETA learned last year that Aaron wanted to sell advertisements on his urns in order to reduce the financial burden on his wife, Kristin, we offered to buy two ads, and Aaron, who had a wonderful sense of humor in addition to being a kind and practical man, accepted our offer. One of the ads we suggested reads, "I've Kicked the Bucket—Have You? Boycott KFC." We explained to Aaron that KFC's suppliers cram the birds slated to end up in all those buckets into huge sheds, where they live amid their own waste and are bred and drugged to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. We informed him that many birds suffer broken bones when slammed into shackles at the slaughterhouse before their throats are cut. Yet the company refuses to adopt the common-sense improvements recommended by its own animal welfare advisors.
Aaron was also an advocate of adopting homeless, mixed-breed dogs and cats from shelters. He wrote on his blog, Judas Forgiven, about the importance of donating to shelters and the joy that his beautiful dog, Belle, brought into his life. Since PETA shared Aaron's concern that every puppy or kitten born means one home fewer for dogs and cats desperately waiting in a shelter or roaming the streets, PETA's other urn ad reads, "People Who Buy Purebred Dogs Really Burn Me Up. Always Adopt."
We ask everyone who knew Aaron or was influenced by this kind man to honor him by "choosing joy," as he put it, and by doing everything that we can to allow animals—who are capable of experiencing such unfettered happiness—to choose joy too.
KFC has had to pull false advertising from its Australian website after a flap with a consumer watchdog group.
KFC had touted that chickens raised for the brand were "free to roam" on farms. But cramming chickens so tightly inside filthy, windowless sheds that they can barely take a step or lift a wing doesn't exactly qualify as "free roaming." When the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched legal action against a KFC supplier for false claims on the supplier's website, KFC backpedaled.
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If only KFC were forced to do the same stateside, where the company has refused the recommendations of its own animal welfare advisors to eliminate the worst abuses of chickens, such as scalding birds to death.
Until KFC stops the charade, tell the company that you aren't buying it, and ask it to eliminate the worst abuses of chickens.
Ryan Gosling has certainly earned his cape this month. First, he broke up a street fight in Manhattan. Then, the Academy Award-nominated actor leapt to the defense of chickens and turkeys on factory farms. Gosling wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on PETA's behalf calling on the agency to revoke its approval of a foam-based extermination method that kills birds by submerging them in foam to slowly suffocate them. This process can take up to 15 minutes and is as traumatic and panic-inducing as killing birds by choking them, strangling them, smothering them, or burying them alive.
"If dogs and cats were killed in this way, the person committing these acts would be charged with cruelty to animals," Gosling wrote. He went on to urge the USDA to put its stamp of approval on a less cruel alternative that uses carbon dioxide to painlessly render birds unconscious and that has already been approved by veterinary experts.
This isn't the first time that Gosling has flexed his impressive muscles in birds' behalf. He previously wrote to KFC and McDonald's urging the fast-food chains to adopt PETA's proposed animal welfare reforms.
We just love a guy who has such a drive to stick up for chicks. You can be a hero for animals, too—don't patronize McDonald's or KFC.
Written by Alisa Mullins
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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