PROTEST HOLDS KFC RESPONSIBLE FOR CRUELTY

For Immediate Release:
April 11, 2006
Contact:Steve Barney - barnes992001@yahoo.com (email)
Clint Freund - 920-382-1988 (cell)

PROTEST HOLDS KFC RESPONSIBLE FOR CRUELTY
Local Activists Mark Full Year of Protests

Oshkosh, WI. — April 12 marks exactly 1 full year of frequent picketing at the KFC restaurant in Oshkosh, since negotiations between PETA and KFC broke down and PETA renewed its international boycott on April 11, 2005:

When: 5 PM, Wednesday, April 12
Where: KFC, 1805 Jackson St. (corner of Jackson and Murdock), Oshkosh.

Over the past 12 months, activists in Oshkosh have provided local residents and KFC restaurant customers with the opportunity to show the KFC company that we will not tolerate the inhumane treatment of farmed animals. During that time, protesters have picketed over 100 times in an effort to raise awareness and inform the community of the targeted international campaign to persuade KFC to adopt the animal welfare program recommended by leading members of its own animal welfare advisory council.

This campaign has a realistic chance to significantly improve the lives and deaths of an astronomical number of some of the most unfortunate, vulnerable, abused and misused nonhuman beings under our dominion. We know that KFC can easily do what we are asking, since McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s are already leading the way.

A shareholder proposal currently pending before KFC’s parent company, Yum Brands, asks that “the Board of Directors issue a report to shareholders … on the feasibility of Yum! Brands' requiring that all chickens served in KFC restaurants be raised according to the recommendations made by Drs. Grandin, Douglass, and Duncan [YUM’s animal welfare advisors, who later resigned in protest] on March 11, 2005.” An independent feasibility study found that such humane standards would pay for themselves in about 3.5 years, and that, alternatively, KFC could recover their entire cost by raising the price of each meal by just two cents for one year.

Chickens are excluded from the only federal law that protects farmed animals—the Humane Slaughter Act. KFC drugs and breeds chickens to grow so large that many become crippled from the weight of their massive upper bodies. They are often still conscious when their throats are slit and when they are scalded to death in defeathering tanks. An undercover video of a KFC “Supplier of the Year,” a Pilgrim’s Pride slaughterhouse in Moorefield, W.Va., showed workers kicking and stomping on live birds and smashing them against walls. According to eyewitness testimony, employees were "ripping birds' beaks off, spray-painting their faces, twisting their heads off, spitting tobacco into their mouths and eyes and breaking them in half -- all while the birds are still alive."

This campaign is led by PETA, and backed by a coalition of animal welfare organizations including the Humane Society of the US, and Farm Sanctuary, representing over 10 million constituents, along with such prominent leaders as Nobel Peace Prize winner His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Rev. Al Sharpton, and Kweisi Mfume (president and CEO of the NAACP).

We strongly urge the local moral community to join this boycott. A decrease in that restaurant’s business, and a show of support, at this time, will essentially send KFC the message that its customers and potential customers support humane farming and slaughter standards, and care about the inhumane treatment of birds which is so pervasive in the industry. In our well-informed opinion, that is the message Oshkosh should wish to send the company and its shareholders. For more information, please visit PETA’s KFC Campaign web site: www.KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.