Chicken Funeral To Mourn Kentucky Fried Cruelty’S Broken Welfare Promises

For Immediate Release:
6 June 2003

Contact:
Sean Gifford 020 7357 9229, ext. 226; 0773 457 9092 (mobile)
Nicola Drew 07867 516716

Ilkley, West Yorkshire — Carrying a small casket to represent the 760 million chickens slaughtered for KFC every year, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), holding cardboard tombstones reading, ‘R.I.P. KFC Chickens: Tortured and Abused’, will protest at a regional KFC office. 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: Monday, 9 June
Time: 1 p.m. sharp
Place: KFC, Foston House, Riddings Road just off The Grove, Ilkley, West Yorkshire

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 has failed to eliminate even the worst abuses, such as the forced rapid growth of chickens and denying chickens enough space to spread just one wing. The campaign follows victories over McDonald’s and Burger King — both companies having bowed to PETA pressure to reduce cruel treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food by implementing unannounced audits of slaughterhouses and ending the painful practice of debeaking.

Among the improvements that PETA wants KFC to implement are: 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 perches, and implementing automated chicken-catching, which reduces the high incidence of bruising, broken bones and stress associated with workers’ roughly catching the birds by hand.

‘KFC stands for cruelty in our book’, says PETA Europe Director of Campaigns Sean Gifford. ‘Nearly 800 million chickens are killed each year for KFC in the cruellest ways imaginable, yet KFC have refused to act to eliminate the worst abuses 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.