One of the world’s largest food firms has bowed to pressure from animal rights activists over the treatment of its animals. KFC, formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken, has agreed to changes in the conditions of its chickens after campaigners threatened to picket its president’s home and run a campaign suggesting KFC stood for Kentucky Fried Cruelty.
The concession means the firm’s chickens will get more living space and ”distractions” and perches, and their slaughter will be more humane.
The campaigners, of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), hailed the change yesterday but said they would still seek more reform.
”This is a huge step forward,” said Peta’s campaign coordinator, Dan Shannon. ”They are the first major food company to recognise the fact that chickens need mental stimulation.” In response to the agreement, Peta said it would suspend its campaign against KFC for 60 days and call off plans to send pickets dressed as chickens to the firm’s head office at Louisville, Kentucky. Before the agreement at Peta’s headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, they had also selected the home of KFC’s president, Cheryl Bachelder, for a picket.
Ingrid Newkirk, Peta’s president, said after the meeting: ”They’ve got to meet all our demands — which are supported by their own advisers and are the barest of bare minimums where farmed animal welfare is concerned — before we can call off our campaign.”
Peta’s advertisements used the slogan ”Kentucky Fried Cruelty”. Intensive campaigning against the company had been planned for June.
KFC, which claims that it adheres to humane standards set by its parent company, Yum!, appears to have agreed to some of Peta’s demands and was said to be examining others. Under the deal, the chickens will get 30% more living space and be provided with cabbages and corn and ”mental and physical stimulation” in the form of perches.
The killing methods at the firm’s 29 slaughterhouses will also be altered. At the moment, chickens are strapped upside down into shackles and swung on to a conveyor belt to reach a ”stun bath”, where they are supposedly stunned before getting their throats slit and their feathers removed in a plunge into boiling water.
Peta has claimed that the chickens are sometimes still alive at the plunging stage. KFC agreed to increase the strength of the stun bath to assure unconsciousness, and to install cameras at its plants by the end of next year.
The company, formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken, was founded in 1952 by Harland Sanders and, by the 1960s had become the largest restaurant chain in the US. Sanders recounted the early years in his 1974 autobiography, Life As I Have Known It Has Been Finger-Lickin’ Good. Life for the 350 million fowls reared and killed for KFC annually was less enjoyable, Peta says.
Peta also wants changes in the ways chickens are fed; at present the birds live most of their lives in discomfort, fed and bred to increase their size.
The pact may not pacify other radical animal activists. ”It’s a good start,” said Animal Freedom Fighters in Santa Monica yesterday. ”But there is no way to factory-farm without animal abuse.” – Guardian Unlimited Â