PETA Protests KFC for Torturing Chickens

Winter weather got you down? While most people are huddled by the fire drinking hot cocoa during the winter chill, PETA’s dedicated volunteers are tying on their bikinis and snapping on their earmuffs to get the message out that for more than 850 million chickens each year, KFC means Kentucky Fried Cruelty.

PETA’s chilly campaign was kicked off by Lauren Anderson during a freezing lunch-time protest in Anchorage, Alaska, last October. Activists across North America soon followed: In Reno, Nevada, activist Michelle Cho braved a state-of-emergency snowstorm; Nicole Matthews took her message that “KFC Tortures Chicks” to KFCs throughout the Midwest and Southeast; and Ashley Fruno fearlessly fought below-freezing temperatures throughout Western Canada.

What’s got these gutsy gals in a flap over KFC? Chickens are excluded from the only federal law that protects farmed animals, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which means that KFC can torture the chickens who end up in its buckets in ways that would result in felony cruelty-to-animals charges if other animals were the victims. Among other horrific abuses, they are drugged and bred to grow so large that many become crippled from the weight of their massive upper bodies. Many have their throats slit while they are still conscious and are scalded to death in defeathering tanks. KFC ignored recommendations for animal welfare improvements made by members of its own advisory panel, including five who have since resigned after being ignored for years. Former KFC advisor Adele Douglass told the Chicago Tribune that KFC “never had any meetings. They never asked any advice, and then they touted to the press that they had this animal-welfare advisory committee. I felt like I was being used.”

PETA’s campaign has enlisted the support of many celebrities, including Nobel Peace Prize winner His Holiness the Dalai Lama, rock icons Sir Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde, actors Pamela Anderson and Bea Arthur, civil rights leaders The Rev. Al Sharpton, Alice Walker, Kweisi Mfume, Dick Gregory, and Dr. Cornel West, and even former KFC spokesperson and Seinfeld star Jason Alexander.

You Can Help!
Don’t eat at KFC until it agrees to stop abusing animals.