KT Tunstall takes on KFC with animal rights rant
Scots singing sensation KT Tunstall is the latest celebrity to be welcomed into the PETA clan, and she's chosen to focus on the the plight of birds destined to become KFC nuggets for her first campaign.
PETA recently reported that KFC in Canada had brought in a new, more stringent animal welfare policy, but there are currently no plans to implement similar changes in the UK. In a bid to encourage them to follow Canada's example, KT wrote a letter to every single KFC restaurant manager in Scotland, along with a DVD, pressuring the company to stop its suppliers' worst abuses of chickens.
Follow the jump to read KT's letter to KFC managers in full.
Dear KFC Manager,
I am writing to ask for your help in changing the way that KFC's suppliers raise and kill chickens for KFC restaurants. PETA is asking KFC to implement what the company's own animal welfare advisors have recommended - a document these advisors put together hat spells out what KFC needs to do. KFC, however, has ignored their recommendations, and five of the advisors have now resigned.
I am asking for you to use your position as a KFC store manager to help eliminate the worst abuses of chickens, such as live scalding in defeathering tanks and drugging chickens to grow so quickly that they become crippled under their own weight. One of KFC's advisors of more than three years, Dr Ian Duncan, who is North America's leading expert on chicken welfare, writes: "The primary breeding companies have been genetically selecting birds for fast growth so intensively that the bones and joints of some birds do not form properly and the birds end up lame."
Of slaughter, he writes: "One of the biggest welfare problems comes at the end of birds' lives ... any birds that have not been properly stunned or cut are still alive and conscious when they go into the scald tank - and this must be agonizing for them. ... Fortunately, a new method for killing birds has been developed in Europe that overcomes all these problems. It's called controlled atmosphere killing and involves placing the birds, still in their transport crates, into a tunnel that has a very low oxygen level. The birds sink into unconsciousness very peacefully and are dead within 1 minute."
I am joining with PETA in asking KFC to take the following actions:
• Adopt the "Animal Care Standards" program, which would lower the levels of ammonia in the air of factory farms, improve the living spaces and lighting in chicken sheds, prohibit the intentional starving of breeding birds and ensure that birds are provided with mental and physical stimulation.
• Switch to controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK), which would also improve conditions for workers and decrease contamination levels in the chickens' flesh.
• Switch to mechanised chicken gathering. This would drastically reduce the number of broken bones and painful bruising that birds endure when thrown into transport crates.
• Breed for health rather than rapid growth, and stop feeding drugs to chickens.
• Make all welfare standards transparent and verifiable, ensuring that the animal welfare program is being adhered to through announced and unannounced independent audits.
As a KFC manager, you can help make positive changes for chickens by letting Yum! UK Managing Director Martin Shuker know that you don't want to sell (and customers don't want to eat) chickens who have been crippled, abused and scalded to death. Please watch the enclosed video, and review the detailed information at PETA.org.uk. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
KT Tunstall
Bloody good show KT Tunstall. It is about time chicken food places stopped the cruelty for the sake of greed for profit and put the HUMAN back into HUMANE.
Posted by: anticruelty | June 11, 2008 3:31 PM