Monday, June 2, 2008

KFC Victory in Canada

For more than five years, PETA has been pressuring fast-food chain KFC to stop the worst abuses of chickens, like scalding birds to death, slitting their throats while they're still conscious, and drugging and breeding them to grow so large that they cripple beneath their own weight. Now PETA has scored a major victory and is ending its Kentucky Fried Cruelty boycott in Canada. The boycott will continue in other countries where KFC has restaurants, including the United States, until they follow KFC Canada's lead.

Following months of closed-door negotiations between PETA and KFC Canada (which is owned by a different company than KFC restaurants in other countries), we are thrilled to announce that KFC Canada has agreed to a historic new animal welfare plan that will dramatically improve the lives and deaths of millions of chickens killed for KFC Canada. The company will take the following actions:

**Phase in purchases of 100 percent of its chickens from suppliers that use controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK)—the least cruel form of poultry slaughter ever developed. KFC Canada is the first major restaurant chain to commit to phasing in the exclusive purchasing of chicken meat from CAK slaughterhouses.
**Add a vegan faux-chicken item to the menu of all 461 Priszm-owned KFC restaurants (more than half of all the KFCs in Canada).
**Improve its animal welfare audit criteria to reduce the number of broken bones and other injuries suffered by birds.
**Urge its suppliers to adopt better practices, including improved lighting, lower stocking density and ammonia levels, and a phaseout of growth-promoting drugs and breeding practices that painfully cripple chickens.
**Form an animal welfare advisory panel to monitor the changes and recommend further advancements.

More about it here.

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