Mike D, AD Rock and MCA, better known as The Beastie Boys, have sent off a letter to the head of KFC, David Novak. The letter asks Novak and KFC to follow PETA's recommendations and halt the abuse that chickens raised for KFC are subjected to. Allegations include that these chickens are painfully debeakied, suffer from life-long crippling, and are scalded while still living.
The Beasties claim is that if KFC treated other animals such as dogs and cats the way that it treats its chickens, the company would be facing felony cruelty-to-animals charges. Peta2.com reports that, "...chickens are probably the most abused animals on Earth, enduring a lifetime of misery, and KFC has a responsibility to ensure that chickens raised for its restaurants are protected from the worst cruelties
www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com reports that, "...chickens... have their sensitive beaks seared off with hot blades and are crammed into tiny cages with the decomposing remains of other birds. Hundreds of thousands are left to starve to death, and huge numbers die as a result of long journeys in extreme weather conditions. Basically, any and all abuse is allowable when it comes to chickens, who are, in fact, remarkable animals with distinct personalities and intelligence that, if allowed to develop, is as advanced as that of cats and dogs. Most importantly, they feel pain, just as we do.
The following is a basic outline of PETA’s recommended animal-welfare program:
Adopt the “Animal Care Standards” program.
This program creates guidelines to protect chickens on factory farms and covers issues such as ammonia concentration, lighting conditions, and living space in chicken sheds. It also prohibits intentional starvation of breeding birds and states that birds must be provided with mental and physical stimulation.
Replace electrical stunning and throat slicing with controlled-atmosphere stunning-to-kill.
Experts agree that controlled-atmosphere killing causes much less suffering than KFC’s present method of snapping chickens’ legs into metal shackles and cutting their throats open, often while they are still conscious.
Switch to humane mechanized chicken gathering.
Studies have shown that using manual methods results in four times as many broken legs, more than eight times as much bruising, and increased stress.
Breed for health rather than forcing rapid growth, and stop feeding drugs to chickens. Breed leaner, healthier, less aggressive birds instead of breeding the biggest, fattest birds possible, and stop feeding chickens antibiotics and other drugs for nontherapeutic purposes.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Olsen
hmm, on the surface this sounds reasonable - is it possible I agree with PETA on something other than the roundness of the earth?
2 - Joe
Yesterday, I drove past a local KFC which had a handful of picketer's out front. I wanted to yell something about choking chickens instead, but, thankfully, the urge passed.
3 - Tom Johnson
All this makes me want to do is get a bucket of extra-crispy.
4 - Kurt Nordstrom
Wow, Al Sharpton and the Beastie Boys on the same side of an issue? The Rapture must be a-comin' soon... ;)
5 - Jenn
Wow, I am truly sick from reading that I had no idea that happened, I rarely eat at KFC but I don't ever planning on going back again. Thats for the info. Hope the Beasties can help out the chickens.
6 - Angela Chen Shui
Excellent post.
Until the bottom line suffers enough to push better care of animals including chickens, assembly line production and treatement will continue. Here's to voting with our $$.
Angela
7 - Alex Knapp
They're just animals to be used for food. Who cares how they're treated?
8 - jason
Who cares? Don't you care about the quality of what you're eating? Don't you care about the ethical questions that arise from something like this?
9 - Alex Knapp
Hey, if maltreatment leads to bad meat, I'm all for reform. But that's the only ethical question. Does this treatment hurt people? If it only hurts the chickens, what does it matter? We're just going to butcher and eat them anyway.
10 - wally bangs
God, the Beasties have turned into such noodlebrains. You don't like how KFC treats the future food product, just don't eat there. Who's out there defending the unborn artichokes?
11 - Eric Olsen
I still can't believe I am with the animal rights loons on this one, but I am. It matters how we treat any and all living things. I have zero qualms about eating anything and everything, but until the moment the creature is killed it IS a creature and unnecessary cruelty is always wrong. In addition, animals raised humanely ARE better nutritionally.
An artichoke is not a creature.
12 - Jason
That's all I'm saying to Eric. I'm no Vegan or anything, lol, I'm just saying that living creatures do have rights and we as consumers have the right to know how our food is prepared.
I'm often surprised at how little people really know about genetically modified food & etc.
13 - Eric Olsen
and there we part Jason, I say modify the hell out of everything until it's perfect
14 - jason
What about the side effects that might be unknown to us? For example, take those perfectly round tomatos.... I think they are having and effect on how quickly teenaged girls develop these days. Just a theory.
15 - Eric Olsen
humans have been "modifying" and selectively breeding for thousands of years - why stop now that we're getting good at it?
16 - Joe
If I were a teenaged boy, I'd consider that a benefit!
17 - jason
I didn't say stop entirely, but we should be mindful about the potential consequences.
The same could be said about the popularity of the flu shot (don't get me started on drug companies) --we don't really know down the road what all this "immunization" will do to the population.
18 - Alex Knapp
Jason-
We do know why girls are developing earlier. Because the onset of puberty is determined by the amount of estrogen in the body, and estroget collects in fat. Heavier kids = heavier girls = earlier puberty.
19 - Eric Olsen
hmm, interesting, I thought it was all the chemicals in the water supply
20 - Tom Johnson
I'm a breast-man myself . . . extra-crispy breasts at KFC, I mean.
I can't believe people are taking this serious. When the Beastie Boys get behind your cause, it pretty much loses any steam it might have had.
Where's BRICKLAYER? I keep checking back to see a reference to the guitar-playing gorilla in the "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" video.
21 - Eric Olsen
then all is lost for Tibet
22 - Tom Johnson
I kind of figured that the Beastie Boys' message to Tibet was getting a little muddled in between "Shake Your Rump" and "B-Boys Makin' with the Freak-Freak."
23 - Eric Olsen
THAT was a good line
24 - Chris Beaumont
That was a fun read, and it seriously made me hungry for some good ol fried chicken. BEasties should get back to making better albums rather than jumping on their crusades.
"Listen, Listen to the cries of the carrots for today is harvest day, and for them it is The Holocaust"
25 - Al Barger
In the first place, why would you presumptively believe anything coming from PETA? Purposely leaving hundreds of thousands of chickens to starve? That doesn't make any sense.
It's unfortunate that the Beasties have absolutely nothing to say musically at this point, and have no better way to gain attention than pimping ignorant liberal nonsense.
You know, these guys used to be musicians- songwriters, even.