For Immediate Release:
April 12, 2005

Contact:
Chris Link 757-622-7382 

Brownsville, Texas — Holding signs that read, "The Colonel’s Secret Recipe: Live Scalding, Painful Debeaking, Crippled Chickens," members of PETA—including an activist wearing a body screen TV showing shocking undercover video footage of chickens on factory farms and in slaughterhouses—will protest KFC suppliers’ abusive treatment of chickens at a local KFC restaurant. A giant, crippled "chicken" will cross the road in front of the restaurant, while activists hand out leaflets. The protest is part of an international campaign to pressure KFC to crack down on cruel treatment of chickens by KFC suppliers, including a slaughterhouse in Moorefield, W.Va., where workers were caught kicking, throwing, and stomping on live birds in an undercover video:

Date: Wednesday, April 13
Time: 3 p.m.
Place: KFC, 2701 Boca Chica Blvd.

After more than two years of protests, billboards, and television ads calling on KFC to stop abuses such as searing the beaks off birds without painkillers and scalding chickens to death in the slaughterhouse, PETA and KFC recently arranged a secret meeting brokered by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. During the meeting, KFC agreed to prepare an action plan based on the recommendations of five mutually agreed-upon industry animal welfare scientists. In return, PETA agreed to a secret campaign moratorium. Each expert endorsed PETA’s four-point animal welfare program, but KFC ignored their recommendations, so PETA has relaunched the campaign.

PETA has had additional high-profile support from Nobel Peace Prize winner His Holiness the Dalai Lama, rock icon Sir Paul McCartney, actors Pamela Anderson and Bea Arthur, former KFC spokesperson Jason Alexander, hip-hop legends The Beastie Boys, and civil-rights leaders Alice Walker, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Kweisi Mfume, Dick Gregory, and Dr. Cornel West.

"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, please visit PETA’s Web site KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.