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Why I boycott KFC
Time for the second part of my Anti- Fast Food Series, featuring the most famous chicken restaurant chain with the three letters... K ... F ...C, which stands for Kentucky Fried Cruelty. KFC is part of YUM! Brands, just like fast food chains A&W, Long John Silver, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
Chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals and are thought to be as intelligent as dogs or cats. When in natural surroundings, not on factory farms, they form friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another, love their young, and enjoy a full life, dust bathing, making nests, roosting in trees, and more.
The more than 700 million chickens raised each year for KFC aren't able to do any of these things. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that stink of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste; they are given barely even room to move (each bird lives in the amount of space equivalent to a standard sheet of paper). They routinely suffer broken bones from being bred to be top heavy, from callous handling (workers roughly grab birds by their legs and stuff them into crates) and from being shackled upside down at slaughterhouses. Chickens are often still fully conscious as their throats are cut or when they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot water to remove their feathers. When they’re killed, chickens are still babies, not yet two months old, out of a natural life span of 10-15 years.
In May of 2001, KFC’s parent company, Yum Brands, Inc. assured PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that it intended to “raise the bar” on animal welfare; yet, to date, KFC has done nothing to address some of the most egregious animal cruelty in the chicken industry. Our help is needed to convince KFC to take some key steps to reduce the worst suffering. Click here for a brief history of why PETA is targeting KFC.
Chickens are probably the most abused animals on the face of the planet. They suffer any number of cruelties, including being left by the hundreds of thousands to starve to death, having their sensitive beaks seared off with hot blades, being crammed 11 birds to a tiny cage along with the decomposing corpses of other chickens, and dying in huge numbers from long journeys in extreme weather conditions. As laying hens age, they begin to lay fewer eggs. So, in order to increase their profits, the egg industry starves the hens for up to two weeks, causing the hens to molt. The forced molting puts the hens in a survival mode, so that when they are fed again, they begin to lay more eggs.
What should be done:
• Replace electrical stunning and throat slicing with gas killing. Experts agree that gas killing causes less suffering for birds than KFC’s present method of snapping chickens’ legs into metal shackles and slicing their throats open, often while they are still conscious.
• Install cameras in slaughterhouses to enforce humane standards. Cameras should be installed at key points for animal handling, including unloading areas, the point of entry into the “stun” bath, the point of entry into the scalding tank, and places where chickens have their throats slit.
• Switch to humane mechanized chicken gathering. Studies have shown that when using manual methods, there are four times as many broken legs, more than eight times as much bruising, and increased stress.
• Stop forcing rapid growth and feeding chickens drugs, and breed for health. Breed leaner, healthier, less aggressive birds instead of breeding the biggest, fattest birds possible, and stop feeding chickens antibiotics and other drugs for nontherapeutic purposes.
• Give chickens more living space. Currently, bird fatality and injury rates are extremely high, based in part on the fact that the birds simply do not have enough space to survive. Experts agree that increased living space would decrease these problems.
• Allow birds the opportunity to fulfill their natural desire for activity. For example, provide the birds with whole green cabbages suspended in the air to peck at and eat. The cabbages stimulate healthy activity, dispel boredom, strengthen leg muscles, and provide nutrients without adding to the weight problems of these birds. Or include sheltered areas and perches in chicken houses, which would enhance the birds’ living space, reducing their stress and aggression, and allow them to engage in some of their natural behaviors.
So what can we do?
1. Adopt a vegan diet if you haven’t already. Click here for a free vegetarian starter kit.
2. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, educating readers about how animals suffer for KFC. Be sure to tell readers that the best thing they can do for animals is to go vegetarian. Click here for PETA’s tips on letter-writing.
3. Boycott KFC and spread the word why you do so.
4. Sign this petition to protest against the chicken farms killing practices.
Do you really want to eat this when you go to KFC or buy mass produced poultry at the grocery store?
Inside a KFC Slaughterhouse in Moorefield, W.Va.
~peace~