Smashing Pumpkins Turns Up The Heat On Kfc

For Immediate Release:
6 April 2009

Contact:
Samantha Glover 0207 357 9229, ext 229; [email protected]
Violet Donohoe 0203 016 3361; [email protected]

London – Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin join the growing list of compassionate musicians who have teamed up with peta2 US, the youth arm of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals US, to stick it to the Colonel – KFC’s Colonel Sanders, that is. The perennial chart-toppers recently signed a petition to KFC at peta2.com and are asking their fans to do the same.

In the petition, Corgan and former Smashing Pumpkins drummer Chamberlin urge KFC to “improve the lives of” chickens who “suffer from extremely crowded conditions, crippling bone and joint problems resulting from top-heavy breeding, callous handling, inhumane slaughter techniques, and shortened life spans”. The nearly 1 billion chickens slaughtered for KFC every year have their sensitive beaks cut off and are drugged and abused.

Smashing Pumpkins joins an ever-growing list of musicians, including Bat For Lashes, Fall Out Boy, Rise Against and Hadouken, that have teamed up with peta2 US to speak out against KFC’s suppliers’ blatant abuse of chickens.

“Corgan and Chamberlin know that kids are fed up with the inhumane treatment of animals, and they’re not going to stand for it anymore”, says peta2 US Assistant Director of Youth Campaigns Dan Shannon. “After all, if KFC executives treated people the way their suppliers treat chickens, they’d be languishing in prison for the rest of their lives.”

For more information and to sign the petition, please visit peta2.com.