Activists Descend On Local Kfc For World Farmed Animals Day

For Immediate Release:
2 October 2003

Contact:
Nicola Drew 020 7357 9229, ext 225; 07791 857041 (mobile); [email protected]
Patricia Tricker 0771 2858127


Hartlepool – Holding signs that read, ‘The Colonel’s Secret Recipe: Live Scalding, Painful Debeaking, Crippled Chickens’, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will hand out leaflets at a local KFC restaurant, urging passers-by to boycott the restaurant to protest the abusive treatment of chickens by KFC’s suppliers. The protest is part of a coordinated effort involving more than 200 similar demonstrations taking place in the UK, Europe and around the world in the days surrounding World Farmed Animals Day on 2 October, which is also the birthday of vegan and animal rights champion Mahatma Gandhi.

Date: Saturday, 4 October
Time: 12:30 pm-2 pm
Place: KFC, Hartlepool Marina Drive Thru, Marina Way, Hartlepool


PETA attempted to work with KFC’s parent company, Yum! Brands, in the US for almost two years prior to the campaign launch, 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 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 and rock icons Sir Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde.

The campaign follows victories over McDonald’s and Burger King, both of which bowed to PETA pressure to reduce the cruel treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food. Earlier this year, PETA successfully sued in the US to force KFC and Yum! Brands to remove an array of false statements from their Web sites and to change customer-service scripts in order to stop KFC operators from lying to callers. KFC’s sales are down 8 per cent in the wake of PETA’s campaign, even as sales at Yum! Brands’ other chains, such as Pizza Hut, continue to rise.

The following are among PETA’s minimal demands for KFC: stop breeding and drugging animals so that they become crippled under their own weight or suffer from heart failure or lung collapse by the millions; stop slaughtering animals in a manner that causes many to be scalded to death or drowned in feather-removal tanks; stop gathering chickens in a manner that breaks millions of the animals’ wings and legs and give the animals some modicum of mental and physical stimulation in their sheds. PETA’s recommended improvements are all approved by members of KFC’s own animal-welfare advisory panel and are based on the latest available scientific research.

‘KFC stands for cruelty in our book’, says PETA Europe Director of European Campaigns Sean Gifford. ‘If KFC executives treated cats or dogs the way they treat chickens, they could go to prison on cruelty charges.’

More than 1,000 protests have taken place in the first nine months of the campaign. For more information, please visit
KFCCruelty.co.uk.