KFC Cruelty - We do chickens Wrong

What's the problem with KFC?
Chickens raised for KFC suffer from the day they are born until the day they are killed, and KFC has refused to make the minimal changes recommended by its own animal welfare advisors to prevent the worst types of cruelty in suppliers' factory farms and slaughterhouses. Imagine what life is like for KFC chickens—if you're a breeder chicken, your sensitive beak is burned off shortly after you're born, and the pain is so great that many around you starve to death because they can't bear to take food into their raw, bloody mouths. If you're one of the 850 million chickens killed by KFC for meat each year, you spend your short life confined to a filthy shed with tens of thousands of other chickens—the shed isn't cleaned, and the smell of ammonia and rotting excrement is so heavy that it burns your lungs with every breath. You've been bred and drugged to grow so obese that you can hardly walk, and you watch as others become crippled under their own weight and die of thirst just a few inches away from the water nozzle. After only a few weeks of life, you are slammed into a crate and trucked over many miles through all weather extremes without food or water to the slaughterhouse. There you are hung upside-down and your throat is cut while you cry out in terror and struggle to escape. If you don't lose consciousness in time, you'll still be alive when you're dragged through the scalding water of the defeathering tanks.

What do you want KFC to change?
PETA is calling on KFC to listen to the recommendations of its own animal welfare advisors and world-renowned experts on animal welfare. These are advisors to the meat industries and government in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. They contend that KFC could make the changes that we're recommending, and they have put together a timetable at KFC's request. Yet KFC refuses to require even a single one of the changes that they're suggesting. Read more about the changes that PETA, animal welfare experts, and KFC's own animal welfare advisors are asking for.

What are you hoping that consumers will do?
Ninety-six percent of Americans say that animals should be protected from abuse, and when people learn how KFC abuses animals, they take their business elsewhere. We're encouraging people to check out videos and information at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com and then decide for themselves if they want to join compassionate people across the globe—including Pamela Anderson, Paul McCartney, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and the Dalai Lama—by speaking out against KFC.

Don't chickens have to be treated well in order to grow efficiently?
Animals on factory farms do not gain weight as a result of being comfortable, content, or well cared for; rather, they continue to grow in miserable conditions because they have been manipulated through genetics and growth-promoting drugs (antibiotics, in the case of birds). Chickens raised for food are killed when they are only 6 weeks old, so the farmers only have to keep them alive for a short period of time—but even that is difficult on today's filthy and disease-ridden factory farms. So farmers dose the animals with antibiotics—not just to make them grow more quickly, but also to help them survive in conditions that would otherwise kill them. By the time they are 6 weeks old—still just babies—many chickens are so sick and top-heavy that they can no longer walk. Even with the help of powerful antibiotics, many birds don't make it. To make up for these losses, farmers cram 30,000 to 50,000 birds into each shed so that if several hundred die each week, there will still be enough birds who survive for the farmer to make a profit.

Don't you just want everyone to stop eating meat and dairy products altogether?
Our KFC boycott is focused on the fact that although 96 percent of Americans want to see animals protected from abuse, every year KFC treats 850 million animals in ways that would warrant felony cruelty charges if the animals were dogs or cats. So although we do advocate a vegetarian diet, this campaign is focused on convincing KFC to alleviate some of the worst abuses, something that meat-eaters and vegetarians alike can support.

They're just chickens—why should we care?
Leading animal behavior scientists from across the globe have found that chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals whose cognitive abilities are more advanced than those of cats, dogs, and even some primates. Chickens understand sophisticated intellectual concepts, learn from watching each other, demonstrate self-control, worry about the future, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation. Every one of the 850 million chickens raised and killed by KFC each year is an individual who feels pain and fear just like the dogs and cats who share our homes—in fact, if KFC treated dogs or cats the way it treats chickens, its executives could go to prison on felony cruelty-to-animals charges. Read what scientists have to say about chicken intelligence.

What sort of a response do you get from people?
No one likes to see animals suffer. When people find out that KFC drugs chickens in order to make them grow so large that their hearts and lungs often give out or they become crippled under their own weight and that many of KFC's chickens are scalded to death, they join our boycott and tell their friends and family to stay away from the Colonel as well. Consumers deserve to know the truth about what KFC does to animals, and most are shocked and horrified when they watch our undercover videos and see what really happens to chickens killed for KFC.

How does KFC get away with lying to the public about its standards?
KFC's recent public statements don't deny our allegations—they simply repeat the same vague assertions that KFC is "committed to the humane treatment of animals" as if that makes it so. KFC learned the hard way that if it lies or tries to deny our truthful allegations of animal abuse, it will have to answer to the courts. After PETA filed a lawsuit against the company because of its overt lies about animal welfare in 2003, KFC was forced to remove untruthful statements about its animal welfare policies from its Web site and customer hotline. In 2005, David Suzuki, Farley Mowat, and other well-respected Canadians filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau in Canada in response to KFC Canada's false statements about how its chickens are treated. People who want to get past KFC's spin and find out the truth about what happens to KFC chickens can watch our video footage of animals suffering in KFC-supplier factory farms and slaughterhouses and decide for themselves if KFC is treating animals humanely. Learn more.

Are other companies as bad as KFC?
KFC tells the public that it's raising the bar on animal welfare, but in reality KFC is trailing behind some of its competitors when it comes to making minimal changes to ease the suffering of animals raised for food. McDonald's and Burger King are making good faith progress on animal welfare, as are some other large corporations, such as Whole Foods, Albertson's, and Safeway. KFC, on the other hand, refuses to implement improvements recommended by its own animal welfare advisors, so that five prominent scientists and meat-industry advisors have resigned. Even after PETA released undercover footage shot inside a slaughterhouse that won KFC's "Supplier of the Year" Award showing workers who were stomping on animals, ripping their heads off, spitting tobacco juice into their eyes, and slamming them against walls, KFC refused to require the changes that have been recommended. While some other fast-food companies have made real progress on the animal welfare front, KFC has stubbornly refused to take the necessary steps to protect chickens from the worst forms of cruelty.

How long will PETA continue its campaign?
We would like nothing more than for KFC to make the animal welfare changes that its experts have suggested so that we can use our resources to fund other important campaigns. The moment that KFC agrees to follow the advice of its advisors and to do so in an open and verifiable way, our campaign will be over—but until that time, we will continue to encourage people to spread the word that KFC means cruelty.