PETA Offers to Pay to Place Anti-KFC Ads on Indianapolis Firetrucks

Group Aims to Help Ease the City's Budget Woes and Expose KFC's Cruelty at the Same Time

For Immediate Release:
January 7, 2010

Contact:
Lindsay Rajt 757-622-7382

Indianapolis -- This afternoon, PETA sent a letter to Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard offering to pay the city $7,500 in exchange for the right to wrap city firetrucks in colorful ads encouraging residents to boycott KFC. PETA's proposal comes on the heels of the city's acceptance of the same payment--$7,500--from KFC to place ads for its unhealthy and cruelly produced food on city fire hydrants and extinguishers. PETA's ad shows a defeathered and scalded chicken alongside the tagline "Chickens Are Burned To Death At KFC…BOYCOTT CRUELTY."

"The city is playing with fire by getting into bed with KFC, a company that scalds birds to death in defeathering tanks," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Our money is as good as KFC's. The difference is that our money doesn't come from animal abuse."

Click here to see the ad. For more information, please visit PETA's blog.

PETA's letter to Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard follows.

January 7, 2010

The Honorable Greg Ballard
Mayor
Indianapolis, Indiana

Dear Mayor Ballard,

We at PETA heard that KFC is paying to advertise on your fire hydrants. We know that times are tough, but instead of promoting a cruel and unhealthy product, we'd like to counteract the ads with one of our own. We will donate an equal $7,500 to your fire department if you will wrap your fire trucks with our Kentucky Fried Cruelty ad (see attached). PETA's ads will offset your budget woes as well as extinguish KFC's efforts to sell its cruel products to Indianapolis residents.

Chickens killed for KFC's fast-food outlets grow up in filthy, extremely crowded sheds, mired in their own waste with no room even to spread their wings. They are drugged and bred to grow so large so quickly that their young bones often become crippled under the weight of their massive upper bodies. At the slaughterhouse, the birds often suffer broken wings and legs when they are dumped from trucks--they are handled as if they were bricks, not living beings made of flesh and blood. Then their legs are slammed into metal shackles--usually resulting in more broken bones--and they have their throats cut while they are still conscious. Many birds are scalded to death when they enter the defeathering tanks.

Members of KFC's own animal welfare advisory board have resigned in disgust at KFC's failure to stop the worst abuses of chickens raised and killed for its restaurants. PETA's ads would ask residents to boycott KFC until they make basic animal welfare improvements.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President