PETA SPOKESWOMAN PAMELA ANDERSON
Graphic chicken cruelty ads make their B.C. debut
JANE ARMSTRONG
September 5, 2007
VANCOUVER -- A controversial TV ad depicting graphic images of crippled and distressed chickens, many destined for fast-food buckets, began airing in Vancouver yesterday, narrated by a sombre-looking Pamela Anderson, the B.C.-born pinup celebrity and animal-rights activist.
The television ads, produced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, take aim at fried-chicken chain KFC, which PETA says has failed to halt the cruel treatment of chicken by its suppliers.
The ad shows overfed chickens toppled on the ground of overcrowded sheds, unable to support their top-heavy bodies.
The video also depicts a chaotic scene of employees hurling live chickens by the handful into crates before they are taken to slaughterhouses.
Once there, they are hung upside by their legs on a moving conveyer belt, where they are stunned before their throats are slit, some while still conscious.
PETA spokesman Matt Prescott said the video was taken by undercover activists at a chicken supplier in Maryland.
The ads have previously run in Toronto and some U.S. markets, although some markets, such as Cleveland, have refused to run them because they are too graphic.
Dressed in a demure pink jacket, Ms. Anderson, who starred in the TV beach drama Baywatch, urged viewers to boycott the fast-food chain until it makes strides in how the millions of chickens it sells each year are bred and killed.
Ms. Anderson said the main ingredient of Colonel Sanders's famed Southern fried chicken is cruelty.
"These chickens have never felt the sun on their back or the earth beneath their feet," Ms. Anderson laments in the ad. Chickens, she added, are "inquisitive, gentle" creatures that are every bit as intelligent as cats and dogs.
A public-relations group representing KFC in Canada did not respond to a request for an interview.
However, in the past, KFC has said it buys from the same suppliers used by most supermarket chains. In addition, it conducts random audits of these suppliers.
PETA is calling for a Canadian boycott after a similar drive in the United States. Mr. Prescott said PETA is singling out KFC because other fast-food chains, namely Burger King and McDonald's, have made efforts to promote more humane methods of treating the animals they use for their respective restaurants. Both chains, he said, are investigating alternative methods of slaughtering chickens.
In Canada, there are provincial and federal guidelines for breeding and slaughtering livestock and poultry. But there have been complaints by animal-rights activists that even government-inspected operations are inhumane.
"We're asking for the boycott of KFC until KFC improves its animal-welfare policies to prevent the worst abuses. Specifically we want them to change the way their suppliers are breeding, gathering and slaughtering chickens," Mr. Prescott said.
One method, more commonly used in Britain, is to kill the poultry with a combination of gases while they're still in the crates. Mr. Prescott said this method is efficient and painless.
"The main difference is ... they're not dumped out of the truck and shackled while they're still conscious," he said.