U.S. Musicians Lead PETA Protest Of Kfc
Goldfinger’s Lead Singer & Guitarist Protest Farming and Slaughter Abuses
For Immediate Release:
11 March 2004
Contact:
Andrew Butler 020 7357 9229, ext. 230; 0779 344 4020 (mobile)
Dawn Carr 020 7357 9229, ext. 224
Brixton – Goldfinger lead singer John Feldmann and guitarist Brian Arthur will lead members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a protest at a local KFC restaurant before going on stage at the Brixton Academy later that evening. Activists will protest documented abuse suffered by chickens at the hands of KFC’s suppliers by handing out leaflets; carrying signs that read, ‘The Colonel’s Secret Recipe: Live Scalding, Painful Debeaking, Crippled Chickens’; and showing shocking undercover video footage of the appalling conditions that chickens endure on factory farms and in abattoirs. The action will continue the string of protests that Feldmann has led at almost every stop on his recently concluded North American tour:
Date: Friday, 12 March
Time: 2:30 p.m.
Place: KFC, 467 Brixton Rd, SW9
Feldmann – a vegan and longtime PETA supporter – has pledged to do everything he can to combat institutionalised cruelty to animals. Among other animal rights actions, he has recorded a PETA radio spot urging his legions of young fans to stop eating the ‘garbage’ fed to them by the meat industry, conducted ‘legal liberations’ of lobsters from supermarket tanks overseas and recorded a message on PETA’s U.S. fur hotline, asking people to ‘get rid of the unsightly hair on [their] back[s]’ by donating their fur coats to PETA. Furthermore, Goldfinger’s Open Your Eyes CD includes the bonus video track ‘Free Me’, which is dedicated to animals who have been killed for meat.
Undercover investigations into KFC suppliers in Germany, India, England and Australia have revealed the same abuses as discovered in the U.S.: crippled chickens living in crowded, filthy conditions. The Sunday Mirror led a report on an investigation into a KFC supplier in the U.K. with the headline ‘Distressed and Dying in a Cramped Shed … Nobody Does Chicken Like KFC’. PETA’s recommended changes are based on the scientific work of KFC’s own animal-welfare advisors and would eliminate only the worst abuses of these animals.
PETA’s minimal demands for KFC are: stop breeding and drugging animals so that they become crippled under their own weight or suffer from heart failure or lung collapse; stop slaughtering animals in a manner that causes many to be scalded to death or drowned in feather-removal tanks and stop gathering chickens in a manner that breaks millions of the animals’ wings and legs.
‘KFC stands for cruelty in my book’, says Feldmann. ‘If KFC executives treated cats or dogs the way they treat chickens, they could go to prison for cruelty to animals.’
Worldwide, during the past year, more than 2,000 protests to reform KFC have taken place. For more information, please visit KFCCruelty.co.uk.
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