For Immediate Release:
December 6, 2004

Contact:
Joe Hinkle 757-622-7382

Orlando, Fla. — Bound to a wheelchair and repeatedly crossing the road in front of a local KFC, an activist in a giant chicken costume will lead a protest against KFC suppliers’ abusive treatment of chickens. Other PETA and ARFF (Animal Rights Foundation of Florida) members will pass out leaflets and hold signs that read, "The Colonel’s Secret Recipe: Live Scalding, Painful Debeaking, Crippled Chickens."

Date: Tuesday, December 7
Time: 12 noon
Place: KFC, 6217 International Dr.

The protest is part of an international campaign to pressure KFC to crack down on cruel treatment of chickens by its suppliers, including a slaughterhouse in Moorefield, W.Va., where workers were caught kicking, throwing, and stomping live birds in a widely distributed video.

PETA attempted to work with Yum! Brands executives prior to launching its "Kentucky Fried Cruelty" Campaign, but despite assurances made long ago by Senior Vice President Jonathan Blum that KFC would "raise the bar" on animal welfare, the company refuses to eliminate the worst abuses. Seinfeld star and ex-KFC pitchman Jason Alexander had his contract with KFC canceled after PETA enlisted him to speak to company execs about the suffering of chickens. PETA has had additional high-profile support from Nobel Peace Prize winner His Holiness the Dalai Lama, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, comedian Richard Pryor, rock icons Sir Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde, actors Pamela Anderson and Bea Arthur, and civil-rights leaders Alice Walker, Kweisi Mfume, Dick Gregory, and Dr. Cornel West.

PETA and ARFF are calling on KFC to make basic improvements based on the best available scientific research and the recommendations of members of KFC’s own animal welfare advisory panel. Other undercover investigations like the one in Moorefield have turned up exactly the same abuses that KFC denies having to address—including crippled chickens kept in crowded, filthy conditions and sadistically tortured. The widely read British newspaper The Sunday Mirror led a report on an investigation into a U.K. KFC supplier with the headline "Distressed and Dying in a Cramped Shed … Nobody Does Chicken Like KFC."

"KFC stands for cruelty in our book," says PETA Director of Vegan Campaigns Bruce Friedrich. "If Yum! executives treated cats or dogs the way they treat chickens, they could go to prison on felony cruelty-to-animals charges."

For more information and to view the video footage, please visit KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.