Article on PETA's Kentucky Fried Cruelty Campaign in SF Chronicle!

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

Greetings from Norfolk, VA! I hope everyone is doing

well and enjoying a peaceful, happy new year. My

sincere apologies for not having written sooner. I've

had it on my list of " to do " items to send a brief

(ha!) synopsis of life at PETA, but things here have

been insanely busy since I arrived over two months

(!!) ago. Alas!

 

A proper synopsis is forthcoming (as are all the

correspondences that I owe some of you - I am SO

behind and SO sorry!), but for the present, I'm

forwarding the following article from the SF

Chronicle.

 

It's an interesting article, acknowledging the

prejudicial human tendency to restrict consideration

for animals to the cute, cuddly ones with large eyes.

The author kindly acknowledges PETA's past successes

in getting mega-corporations such as McDonald's to

improve animal welfare standards, while also

commenting on the difficulty of getting people to

empathize with chickens (Bruce was on some CNN show

last week, where the hosts made fun of Bruce's comment

that chickens want to spend time with their families

--people seriously don't get it, and are remarkably

ignorant!).

 

I think it would be super to write letters of thanks

to the author (whose email is below), and to submit

letters to the editor of the Chronicle

(letters) letting readers know that

whatever the outcome in the Kentucky Fried Cruelty

campaign being waged by PETA, consumers can take

matters into their own hands and take cruelty off

their plates by making the compassionate choice and

going vegetarian.

 

BTW, you can get more info on the KFC campaign by

checking out: http://www.KentuckyFriedCruelty.com. On

the website, you'll find information that addresses

KFC's bogus claims that it already follows guidelines

prepared by its panel of animal welfare experts. You

may want to include this information in your letter.

 

Thanks so much!

 

Hope everyone is well. Looking forward to seeing you

all at the Bay Area Veg Fair!

 

xo,

Alka

 

P.S. - I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow

evening's vote by the Berkeley City Council!

 

The San Francisco Chronicle

JANUARY 12, 2003, SUNDAY, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: INSIGHT; Pg. D2

HEADLINE: NUTRITION;

And We're Not Talking Turkey;

Poor dumb clucks: Murder most fowl at the chicken

factory

SOURCE: Insight Staff Writer

BYLINE: Vicki Haddock

BODY:

Kentucky Fried Chicken long has touted its fowl food

with the slogan,

" We do chicken right! " Now along comes PETA -- People

for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals -- to charge that ol' Colonel

Sanders actually is

doing chickens wrong.

A modicum of pity is in order for PETA, which last

week called for a

worldwide boycott of KFC because of the cramped

conditions in which its

suppliers raise the living creatures destined to

become Extra Crispy

Wings and Original Flavor Drumsticks. PETA has assumed

the monumental

challenge to engender public empathy for the lowly

chicken.

Talk about your super-sized order.

Let's be the brutal Homo sapiens PETA knows we are:

There is little

endearing about chickens. The squawks they emit could

hardly be regarded

as melodic, not even to tone-deaf Audubonites wearing

earmuffs. With

beaks a-pecking and claws a-scratching, these jittery

critters are the

antithesis of cuddly.

Nor do birds in general command respect for their

innate

intelligence. Lest we forget, turkeys have been known

to stand out in

the rain gazing skyward with beaks open until they

drown -- at least

according to the propaganda promulgated by turkey

farmers.

But more than anything else, poultry flunks the " eye

test. "

Ask any biologist or Disney animator: Humans are

hard-wired to

respond warmly to creatures with large eyes. Bambi's

mother has huge

doe eyes and warms the cockles of our hearts. Chickens

have little

beady eyes and leave us cold.

In his meditation on weariness, Chilean poet Pablo

Neruda observed,

" I am weary of chickens. They look up at us with their

small eyes as

though we were unimportant. " They are right, of

course, we are -- but

as folk singer Greg Brown once exclaimed, " It's hard

to take it from a

damned chicken. "

Their imperiousness may help explain why so many

people -- even

self-proclaimed vegetarians -- will still eat chicken.

As Brown figures,

they look like a stalk of broccoli running around the

barnyard and thus

qualify as " kind of a cusp species. "

In the Church of Vegetarianism, so many half-hearted

believers

indulge in chicken that they form a subset with their

own oxymoronic

name: " pollo-vegetarians. " Time magazine,

extrapolating from its own

survey this year, concluded that some 10 million

Americans today

consider themselves practicing vegetarians. But of

11,000 people

queried, 60 percent of those who responded " Yes, I am

a vegetarian " had

eaten poultry or seafood in the previous 24 hours.

Via dueling press conferences and Web sites, PETA and

KFC agree

about virtually nothing when it comes to the

conditions of the

colonel's chickens, whose edible corpses number 700

million a year.

PETA gamely contends that chickens are " inquisitive

and interesting

animals "

-- at least as intelligent as dogs or cats. " When in

natural

surroundings, not on factory farms, " PETA says, " they

form friendships

and social hierarchies, recognize one another, love

their young, and

enjoy a full life, dust bathing, making nests,

roosting in trees, and

more. "

Instead, the animal rights organization alleges,

chickens raised for

KFC are crammed by the tens of thousands into stinky

sheds, each bird

accorded living space the size of a sheet of typing

paper. Workers

callously stuff them into crates and sometimes dump

conscious chickens

into tanks of scalding water to de-feather them. In

short, PETA says in

an acknowledgment of the third-class status of

chickens, " these animals

continue to be treated in ways that would warrant

prison terms for

(KFC) executives if dogs and cats, rather than

chickens, were treated

so badly. "

And in the end, of course, they get slaughtered.

KFC dismisses the allegations, insisting, in the words

of Joanne

Plichta, vice president of research and development,

that " KFC is

committed to the well-being and humane treatment of

broiler chickens. "

The company says it has guidelines for such treatment

and has engaged

outside experts to conduct regular, unannounced audits

at poultry

suppliers to ensure compliance.

The colonel's defenders also take pains to note that

PETA -- an

organization of provocateurs who disrupt fur shows and

once dumped a

dead raccoon into the soup of a Vogue editor --

ultimately aims to

bully us all into vegetarianism. In a PETA-perfect

world, we would

eschew even honey, for to do otherwise would be to

embezzle the efforts

of oppressed worker bees.

But PETA is accumulating a track record of

public-relations

successes, embarrassing fast food chains into

improving their

suppliers' treatment of animals. McDonald's, for

instance, has agreed

to buy eggs only from suppliers that provide their

hens with roomier

cages.

The newest campaign will use flyers and bumper

stickers to pressure

KFC to institute reforms such as gassing chickens to

sleep before

cutting their throats.

Alas, until geneticists can breed a broiler with Bambi

eyes, that

extraordinarily modest change may be the best thing

for which an animal

rights activist -- or a chicken -- can hope.E-mail

Vicki Haddock at

vhaddock.

 

 

 

 

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