From todays New York Times.
Animal Fans' Secret Recipe Is to Boycott Restaurant
By ELIZABETH BECKER
ASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal welfare group, begins a global boycott on Monday of KFC to seek an improvement in the lives and deaths of 700 million chickens who become the chain's fried meals every year.
The group plans to pass out bumper stickers and fliers on Monday in Louisville, Ky., Toronto, London and Bombay to start a campaign pressing the chain to change how chickens are raised in large factory farms in the United States and around the world. Among the suggestions are to improve the diets of breeder hens and to gas chickens to sleep before they are slaughtered.
This is not the group's first campaign to improve chickens' lives — it has won concessions from McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's. But it is the group's first effort to focus on restaurants worldwide and it comes when fast-food restaurants are under pressure on several fronts.
With fat people trying to sue fast-food restaurants for helping to cause their obesity, the group hopes to tap into the growing public criticism of a fast-food diet as well as the concern over farm animal welfare. Instead of following the slow path of pushing for changes in regulations, the group wants restaurants to enforce immediate changes by telling farmers they will not buy chickens raised and slaughtered under current conditions.
"If people knew what happened to those chickens, raising them in their own filth and then dumping them on an assembly line to have their throats cut when they're still alive, they wouldn't go to Kentucky Fried Chicken," a spokesman for the group, Bruce Friedrich, said.
That strategy worked against those other fast-food chains. After an 11-month campaign, McDonald's agreed to buy eggs only from farms that gave egg laying hens extra water, more wing room in their cages and fresh air. It also said it would insist that slaughterhouses stun animals before they are killed.
Officials of the KFC Corporation declined a request for an interview and would not respond to the accusations from the group. Instead they issued a statement.
"KFC is committed to the well being and humane treatment of chickens and we require all of our suppliers to follow welfare guidelines developed by us with leading experts on our Animal Welfare Advisory Council," the statement said. "Our suppliers are receiving unannounced audits at their poultry facilities throughout the year to ensure strict compliance with our guidelines."
Ian Duncan, a member of the advisory council and chairman of animal welfare in the department of animal and poultry sciences at the University of Guelph in Canada, said the animal welfare group may have a point.
"I've been doing research into chicken welfare since 1965 and change has been slow, very slow," Mr. Duncan said in a telephone interview.
"PETA is very extreme and they exaggerate, but maybe that's what it takes," he said. "I used to be very much against them, but I can see they are getting things done."
The restaurant and poultry industries disagree and say their guidelines are sufficient.
The changes the group seeks — giving the chickens more room to roam in their barns, improving the trucks that transport them to the slaughterhouses — would increase the cost of raising the animals, industry officials said.
Terrie Dort, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants, has been part of a two-year project to alter industry guidelines for raising farm animals. She said the timing of this boycott is a betrayal of that effort.
"I think it is very counterproductive when PETA knows the pressures we are under to get these guidelines in order," Ms. Dort said.
Environmentalists and animal welfare groups are attacking the large scale of animal husbandry, which can cause water pollution and other ecological damage.
With the PETA campaign trying to convince consumers that the animals are not well cared for, the poultry industry is highlighting its new guidelines for raising chickens and criticizing the group for its stated goal to turn more Americans into vegetarians.
"PETA's objective is not to improve animal welfare but to eliminate the use of food from animal sources," a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, Richard Lobb, said. "A proper concern for animal welfare is already well established in the broiler chicken industry."
Animal Fans' Secret Recipe Is to Boycott Restaurant
By ELIZABETH BECKER
ASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal welfare group, begins a global boycott on Monday of KFC to seek an improvement in the lives and deaths of 700 million chickens who become the chain's fried meals every year.
The group plans to pass out bumper stickers and fliers on Monday in Louisville, Ky., Toronto, London and Bombay to start a campaign pressing the chain to change how chickens are raised in large factory farms in the United States and around the world. Among the suggestions are to improve the diets of breeder hens and to gas chickens to sleep before they are slaughtered.
This is not the group's first campaign to improve chickens' lives — it has won concessions from McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's. But it is the group's first effort to focus on restaurants worldwide and it comes when fast-food restaurants are under pressure on several fronts.
With fat people trying to sue fast-food restaurants for helping to cause their obesity, the group hopes to tap into the growing public criticism of a fast-food diet as well as the concern over farm animal welfare. Instead of following the slow path of pushing for changes in regulations, the group wants restaurants to enforce immediate changes by telling farmers they will not buy chickens raised and slaughtered under current conditions.
"If people knew what happened to those chickens, raising them in their own filth and then dumping them on an assembly line to have their throats cut when they're still alive, they wouldn't go to Kentucky Fried Chicken," a spokesman for the group, Bruce Friedrich, said.
That strategy worked against those other fast-food chains. After an 11-month campaign, McDonald's agreed to buy eggs only from farms that gave egg laying hens extra water, more wing room in their cages and fresh air. It also said it would insist that slaughterhouses stun animals before they are killed.
Officials of the KFC Corporation declined a request for an interview and would not respond to the accusations from the group. Instead they issued a statement.
"KFC is committed to the well being and humane treatment of chickens and we require all of our suppliers to follow welfare guidelines developed by us with leading experts on our Animal Welfare Advisory Council," the statement said. "Our suppliers are receiving unannounced audits at their poultry facilities throughout the year to ensure strict compliance with our guidelines."
Ian Duncan, a member of the advisory council and chairman of animal welfare in the department of animal and poultry sciences at the University of Guelph in Canada, said the animal welfare group may have a point.
"I've been doing research into chicken welfare since 1965 and change has been slow, very slow," Mr. Duncan said in a telephone interview.
"PETA is very extreme and they exaggerate, but maybe that's what it takes," he said. "I used to be very much against them, but I can see they are getting things done."
The restaurant and poultry industries disagree and say their guidelines are sufficient.
The changes the group seeks — giving the chickens more room to roam in their barns, improving the trucks that transport them to the slaughterhouses — would increase the cost of raising the animals, industry officials said.
Terrie Dort, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants, has been part of a two-year project to alter industry guidelines for raising farm animals. She said the timing of this boycott is a betrayal of that effort.
"I think it is very counterproductive when PETA knows the pressures we are under to get these guidelines in order," Ms. Dort said.
Environmentalists and animal welfare groups are attacking the large scale of animal husbandry, which can cause water pollution and other ecological damage.
With the PETA campaign trying to convince consumers that the animals are not well cared for, the poultry industry is highlighting its new guidelines for raising chickens and criticizing the group for its stated goal to turn more Americans into vegetarians.
"PETA's objective is not to improve animal welfare but to eliminate the use of food from animal sources," a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, Richard Lobb, said. "A proper concern for animal welfare is already well established in the broiler chicken industry."