PETA Members Lead Protest Against Kfc Farming And Slaughter Abuses

For Immediate Release:
8 May 2003

Contact:
Sean Gifford 020 7357 9229, ext. 226; 0773 457 9092 (mobile)
Genene Edwards 07941 867980

London – Holding signs that read, ‘The Colonel’s Secret Recipe: Live Scalding, Painful Debeaking, Crippled Chickens’, and depict the Colonel as a bloody butcher, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will protest the abusive treatment of animals by KFC suppliers at a local KFC restaurant. The protest is part of an international campaign launched by PETA on 7 January after nearly two years of failed negotiations with KFC’s parent corporation, Yum! Brands.

Date: Friday 9 May 2003
Time: 12 noon to 2 p.m.
Place: KFC, 22 Seven Sisters Road, Holloway

PETA attempted to work with Yum! Brands executives for 21 months prior to the campaign launch, 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. The campaign follows victories over McDonald’s and Burger King – both of which bowed to PETA pressure to reduce cruel treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food.

Among the improvements that PETA wants KFC to implement are the following: replacing crude and ineffective electric stunning and throat-slitting with gas killing; phasing out the forced rapid growth of chickens, which causes metabolic disorders and lameness; increasing the space allotted per bird; adding minimal enhancements, such as sheltered areas and perches and implementing automated chicken-catching, a process that reduces the high incidence of bruising, broken bones and stress associated with catching the birds by hand.

‘KFC stands for cruelty, in our book’, says Director of Campaigns for PETA Europe Sean Gifford. ‘Nearly 800 million chickens are killed each year for KFC in the cruellest ways imaginable, yet KFC has refused to do anything whatsoever to eliminate the worst abuses that these animals suffer.’

Protests are planned in cities throughout the world and have already begun across North America, Europe and Australia. For more information, please visit KFCCruelty.co.uk.