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Hello. I’m Pam Anderson with PETA. You probably have heard of “The Colonel’s Secret Recipe,”
but you probably have no idea what goes into making a bucket of KFC chicken. Sadly, the
main ingredient is cruelty.
The more than 750 million chickens raised each year for KFC are treated like meat machines,
not animals. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds. Their throats burn
as they try to breathe air filled with ammonia fumes from accumulated waste. They routinely
suffer broken bones from being bred to be top-heavy, from rough handling, and from being
shackled upside-down at the slaughterhouse. Many chickens are still conscious as their
throats are cut or when they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot water for feather removal.
When they’re killed, chickens are still babies, not yet 2 months old, out of a natural
life span of 10 to 15 years. These chickens never feel the sun on their backs or the earth
beneath their feet.
PETA has asked KFC to make simple changes in the way that it treats its chickens, yet
KFC refuses to do even the bare minimum to spare the birds the most needless suffering.
Despite KFC claims, parent birds on supplier farms have their beaks chopped off soon after
they’re hatched. This horribly painful procedure can make eating excruciating for weeks, and
the shock of it sometimes kills the birds. Cutting a beak off is not like trimming your
nails—it’s like having the tips of your fingers chopped off. The pain goes on for
weeks and can even result in slow starvation.
KFC’s chickens are crammed by the tens of thousands into feces-laden sheds. The communities
that they establish in nature are far, far smaller, but here in the sheds they are so
large that the birds cannot establish a “pecking order.” This leads to a high level of stress.
In fact, all their natural desires are completely frustrated in this crowded yet barren environment.
Because broiler chickens are bred and drugged in order to grow at an unnaturally fast pace,
the birds become so fat so quickly that their bodies cannot keep up. Their hearts, lungs,
and other organs find it difficult to support their massive size and can fail. Their weak
legs cannot support their heavy chests, resulting in lameness.
Catching the birds for transport to slaughter is extremely harmful to them when done by
poorly paid and poorly trained workers. The catchers gather four or five birds at a time
and violently hurl them into crates, often breaking their bones and bruising them.
When KFC chickens arrive at the slaughterhouse, they are dumped out of their transport crates
and their weak, bruised, or broken legs are snapped into metal shackles. The birds are
then run through an electric stun bath. The company will often set the voltage in the
stun bath so low that the birds are not rendered insensible to pain and instead often suffer
painful shocks before they are stunned. The birds then have their throats slit. Finally,
they are dumped into a tank of scalding water for feather removal. Some birds are still
alive and conscious through the entire frightening and painful procedure and then they are scalded
alive.
Six years after KFC first promised that it takes animal welfare seriously, a PETA undercover
investigator witnessed workers at this KFC-supplier slaughterhouse in West Virginia slamming live
animals into walls, stomping up and down on them, kicking them across the room, and tearing
them apart. Plant management knew about this abuse but did nothing to stop it. This plant
hosted a KFC “supplier of the year” ceremony and many of the workers wear KFC clothing
and drink from KFC cups.
In May of 2001, KFC assured PETA that it intended to “raise the bar” on animal welfare,
but to date, KFC has done little to address some of the worst animal cruelty in the chicken
industry.
Chickens are inquisitive, gentle animals who are known to be at least as intelligent as
dogs or cats. When in natural surroundings and not stuck on factory farms, they form
friendships and lasting bonds with other birds. They recognize one another, love their young,
and enjoy a full life, including taking dust baths, making nests, roosting in trees, and
basking in the sun.
We need your help to convince KFC to take some key steps to reduce the worst suffering
inflicted on these animals. Please visit KentuckyFriedCruelty.com to learn what you can do to help. Thank you.