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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2007

KFC owner tries to buy PETA warehouse

 

NORFOLK, Va.--Yum Brands, the owner of the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain, recently offered $1 million to buy a warehouse in Norfolk, Virginia, Andrew Martin reported in the January 17, 2007 edition of New York Times.

Unknown to Yum, the warehouse belongs to PETA.

"'PETA would be willing to give Yum this warehouse, free and clear," PETA responded, "if KFC requires its chicken suppliers to adopt the recommendations made by members of its own Animal Welfare Advisory Council on March 11, 2005. A copy of these recommendations is enclosed for your reference."

The Animal Welfare Advisory Council suggested that KFC suppliers should quit using antibiotics to expedite chicken growth, stop breeding chickens to have breasts so big that the chickens have difficulty walking, and should switch from electrically stunning chickens to killing them with "controlled atmosphere" gassing.

Animal Welfare Advisory Council member Temple Grandin resigned six weeks later, after Yum Brands asked council members to sign a confidentiality agreement that would have kept them from making their recommendations public.

Wrote Martin, "Matt Prescott, PETA's manager for factory farm campaigns, said PETA made the offer [of the warehouse] because protecting chickens from what it considers abusive treatment is worth more."

Yum Brands declined to accept.

A PETA undercover investigation in July 2004 caused Pilgrim's Pride, a major KFC chicken supplier, to fire 11 employees at a slaughterhouse in Moorefield, West Virginia, and retrain managers at 24 slaughterhouses in all, to prevent similar abuses.