Members Of PETA Lead Protest In Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Against Kfc Farming And Slaughter Abuses

Knife-Wielding ‘Colonel Sanders’ Focuses Attention on ‘Kentucky Fried Cruelty’

For Immediate Release:
16 March 2004

Contact:
Sean Gifford 020 7357 9229 ext 226; 0773 457 9092 (mobile)

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne – Holding signs that depict the Colonel as a bloody butcher with the caption ‘The Colonel’s Secret Recipe: Live Scalding, Painful Debeaking, Crippled Chickens’, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will protest the abusive treatment of animals by KFC suppliers at a local KFC restaurant:

Date:    17 March
Time:    Noon sharp
Place:   KFC, Northumberland Street

PETA US attempted to work with Yum! Brands executives prior to the launch of the campaign, but despite assurances made long ago by Senior Vice President Jonathan Blum that KFC would ‘raise the bar’ on animal welfare, the company refuses to eliminate the worst abuses. Seinfeld star and ex-KFC pitchman Jason Alexander had his contract with KFC cancelled after PETA US enlisted him to speak to company execs about the suffering of chickens. PETA has had additional high-profile support from hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, actor Pamela Anderson and rock icons Sir Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde.

PETA is calling on KFC to make basic improvements based on the best available scientific research and the recommendations of KFC’s own animal-welfare advisory panel. Undercover investigations into KFC suppliers in the U.S., Germany, India, England and Australia have all revealed the same abuses – crippled chickens living in crowded, filthy conditions. The widely read Sunday Mirror led a report on an investigation into a UK KFC supplier with the headline ‘Distressed and Dying in a Cramped Shed … Nobody Does Chicken Like KFC’.

‘KFC stands for cruelty in our book’, says PETA Director of European Campaigns Sean Gifford. ‘Nearly 750 million chickens are killed each year for KFC in the cruellest ways imaginable, yet KFC has refused to do anything whatsoever to eliminate the worst abuses that these animals suffer.’

For more information, please visit KFCCruelty.co.uk.

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