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Vegans Love (at) KFC

By Kasandra Bracken

2008_09_11kfc.jpgWe all know the Four Seasons is soo last year for weddings, but what’s the number one place to say your wedding vows this year? Why, KFC of course—nothing says “I love you” like a hefty carton of deep-fried chicken. And the best part? They cater, too—even if you’re vegan.
KFC Canada has got one wing up on its competition—it’s where vegan PETA member Alex Bury wed her fiancé Jack Norris earlier today inside of the 466 Queen Street West location. Rumor has it that the flower girls dropped drumsticks instead of flower petals. But really, attendees were treated to a veritable fast-food feast of “chicken” burgers, the newest addition to KFC’s Canadian menu. And from what we’ve heard, they’re absolutely scrumptious.
After more than five years of petitioning against Kentucky Fried Cruelty, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has won the war against KFC on the grounds of chicken abuse. According to PETA, KFC is now committed to using controlled-atmosphere killing, “the least cruel form of poultry slaughter ever developed” and an animal welfare advisory panel, among other things. They’ve even introduced a new, cripsy-on-the-outside, juicy-on-the-inside, unchicken sandwich to 461 Canadian stores. The U.S. has yet to follow suit, but PETA plans to continue boycotting and petitioning in the States until KFC changes its slanderous ways.
Vegan purists, however, might be wary of trusting a company known for its greasy, breaded chicken. Any crispy sandwich must be deep-fried—whether chicken or unchicken. And, as reported by Ecorazzi, all the patties swim in the same grease. That means your soy-based patty could be sizzling in the same sauce as a cruel chicken patty had done seconds before. Now that’s what we call tainted meat.
Photo by SqueakyMarmot. Thanks to the Post for the tip.

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Comments

  • jslice

    This is exactly the type of thing that makes me hate PETA. I don’t think that just because KFC moved to a supposedly “kinder” way to kill the chickens, PETA should now bow to KFC. Doing that sends a wrong and confusing message which is also giving KFC a weirdly large amount of love from PETA.

  • Ben

    all the patties swim in the same grease.

    I generally feel like I’ve ingested most of a chicken just after walking through the stench of a nearby KFC.

  • canuck1975

    I don’t get vegetarianism because of animal cruelty. If you’re really concerned, why not just eat Kosher meats? They’re raised and slaughtered the same way today as they were 5000 years ago.
    Anyway, I highly doubt that KFC made the decision based on ethical grounds. They most likely realized there’s a shrewd business decision in changing the way the animals are slaughtered that gives them a leg-up on their competition. Now they can say they’re both trans-fat free *and* treat their chicken right.
    I wonder if PETA will go and target some other fast food place. Maybe they should go after McDonalds for how they raise cows.

  • Mark Ostler

    Animals killed for kosher meat apparently have their throats slit while still alive and it can take up to several minutes for them to die.
    Also, I’ve never heard of any rules about how kosher meat animals must be raised. Do you know where I can find the rules, if there are any, that address this? (Won’t convince me to start eating meat again, but I’m still curious.) I can’t be sure that they’re not being treated the same as other livestock.
    There’s really no nice way of killing something to eat it, but there must be less cruel ways to do it that the traditional kosher method.

  • Gauldar

    I don’t know much about kosher meat production, but I’ve heard that they have higher standards but I don’t know what specificly those standards are. Do they need some sort of certifacation & quality control to be able to call their product kosher?

  • VeganEric

    For info on the cruelty involved in modern Kosher slaughter, including the latest investigation into the world’s largest Kosher slaughterhouse, check out the main page of http://www.peta.org or visit directly – http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/agriprocessors_investigation_2008
    Kosher is no longer considered a humane method of slaughter, as it has been modernized with factory farms to include cruelty, like cows getting their trachea’s ripped out while they’re still alive.
    Congrats to those two on getting married!

  • Gauldar

    Oh, I’m not concerned about cruelty, your hacking apart an animal. I mean, they can’t exactly choose the way they die, although it would be cool if we could talk to animals and ask them “Would you like a quit death, or a nice slow one”? Their reply would almost always be “But I don’t want to die!”, but that of course is not their choice. Seriously, if I somehow fall into a lions habitat in the zoo, the lion has every right to eat my ass there on the spot. Now it’s not the same thing, since lions aren’t breeding humans for daily consumption. Next evolutionary leap though I highly recommend they do, but use proper food safety standards and avoid contamination for they might be afflicted with “mad human”.

  • bbpsi

    PETA, as always, is acting incredibly bizarre. I was under the impression they were strongly opposed to the eating of animals, at all.
    from here:
    “[Controlled atmosphere killing] works by replacing birds’ oxygen with a mixture of nonpoisonous inert gasses to gently put them “to sleep.” It may sound horrible—because killing animals for a fleeting taste sensation always is—but for animals killed for food, it’s a 180° turnaround.”
    So, its okay for PETA to have this sudden love affair with KFC because they now have “less cruel” slaughter methods? You’d think they’d still hate KFC for, you know, serving meat.

  • twiggyfan14

    Controlled atmospheric killing will do much to reduce the suffering involved in the slaughter experience for chickens and is certainly a progressive move from this corporation. The addition of a vegetarian option at their stores will also do much to offer people a good choice to eat tasty, cruelty free foods. Congratulations to Jack and Alex. I appreciate them for making their wedding an occasion to promote a real reduction in animal suffering.

  • Gauldar

    But that’s the thing, whats the purpose of being concerned of suffering of something you plan on killing? The only point of suffering is planning on letting the thing live with the experience of having been through that suffering. It’s the concept of torture, which is dependent on the subject, where killing effects those around and are connected to the subject causing them to suffer. So why care about suffering if something is going to be killed anyways. That has always confused me.

  • Mark Ostler

    Because pain and suffering are cruel, Gauldar.
    It’s like saying “Why give this terminally ill patient pain medication when they’re just going to die anyway?”
    What is the point of medicating the elderly or terminally ill? To mitigate pain and suffering caused by dying bodies. The same concept applies here. Yes the animals were bred to live short lives and die to feed people, but just because they will die doesn’t mean that they have to feel unimaginable pain before it happens. They suffer enough in their cages already.

  • Gauldar

    So do we gauge amounts of suffering, and how much is too much? Not to mention that we are talking about two different types of pain: mental anguish and physical nerve response. It would be interesting on how much pain a chicken actually feels, considering chicken have been known to be able to live without a head (just as long as they don’t choke to death on a piece of corn that is). Does the misery of being locked up in a cage throughout its growth pale in comparison to the short moments before they die? Wouldn’t it be better that they live enjoyable lives before dying painfully? Free-range I think they call it, unfortunatly I am sure that is not feasible for an opperation like KFC.

  • twiggyfan14

    Most of the suffering that broiler chickens endure comes from being trapped in their rapidly growing mega-metabolising bodies, which takes them from chicks of a few ounces to 5 pound birds headed for slaughter in just 6-7 weeks. This rapid growth causes such joint pain that many are crippled, or endure heart and lung failure as their cardiovascular system struggles to feed their massive muscle growth. All are burned by the ammonia fumes coming from their waste soaked litter. So, it is true that gassing birds cuts out a relatively small piece of their suffering. However, being gassed as opposed to being hung upside down on a rapidly moving slaughter line will spare many birds with broken bones (from catching and crowded transport) from having their broken bones jostled about on the line, and others who miss the blade from being scalded alive in the defeathering hot water tanks. Seems like the least decent thing we can do, correct?

  • Gauldar

    Ok, thanks for filling me in the whole process, but that’s not my point. Is this less torturing treatment of preparing them a reason so we can pat ourselves on the back? Meh, doesn’t matter anyways. It is what it is.

  • twiggyfan14

    The amount of suffering that they go through is the reason that I go out each week with quality literature in hand to ask thousands of people to behave decently and stop sentencing creatures with the same capacity to feel pain as you or I to this brutal existence. A move by a corporation that will reduce the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of birds processed for it’s selfish customers is certainly significant. Would we feel so carefree “doesn’t matter anyways…it is what it is” if we were the ones made to suffer so? As we go through life it is a good idea to think of others.

  • torontothegreat

    We are talking about animals that would have no existence if people didn’t eat them right?
    These animals have been domesticated for thousands of years exclusively for our consumption.
    To go as far as calling omnivores (our nature) ‘selfish’ for eating meat, is laughable at best.
    >Would we feel so carefree “doesn’t matter anyways…it is what it is” if we were the ones made to suffer so?
    You’re right, the human race has never suffered and we have globally stopped suffering amongst ourselves by ourselves.

  • canuck1975

    >I don’t get vegetarianism because of animal cruelty.
    I still don’t get it. Sorry. I think TTG has made the right point. We’re creatures who thrive on cruelty. I mean, come on, Paris Hilton is a superstar. We all must be self-masochists.
    Oh, and the fact that you have to qualify your literature as “quality” is pretty sad, twiggy. I’m curious to know what you’d consider lower vs. higher quality material in this context.

  • Gauldar

    I’m just saying, it reminds me of that Mad TV skit, where they are advertising a cooking oil “NOW with 10% less anal leakage”. The way I am looking at it is, anal leakage is still anal leakage, it doesn’t matter that there is 10% less.

  • canuck1975

    Anal leakage adds methane to the atmosphere and increases greenhouse gasses. I think we need to start to regulate how much anal leakage every living organism is allowed to excrete, with stiff fines for going over their allotments.

  • Gauldar

    I PAY MY TAXES! I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO HAVE AS MUCH ANAL LEAKAGE AS I DAMN WELL DESERVE!

  • Gauldar

    Hmm, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Any vegans here should make sure they are getting their Vitamin B12 one way or another. It also has an interesting tidbit of info on wine and beer.

  • twiggyfan14

    To cause others to suffer when it is not necessary to do so is the epitome of selfish. We can live perfectly well without doing this, and as creatures capable of moral reasoning, well most of us are, we should do the decent thing and not cause that suffering. Quality literature would be literature from difficult to dismiss sources, such as animal agriculture journals and textbooks that report on standard agricultural practices. Controlling others, like the process of domesticating animals, does not justify their further mistreatment. Was human slavery justified by the idea that Black people and Red people existed to serve whites?

  • Gauldar

    Twiggy, you just opened up yourself a can of worms. Would you compair a short lifespan of a simple minded animal who’s suffering is short term and ended, or a human who has endured a lifespan of suffering wishing the whole thing will end? You have no idea what suffering is.

  • canuck1975

    I’m Jewish. I know suffering. You should meet my mother. Oh, I also know selfish. Humanity is selfish at its nature. Oh wait, all mammals are.
    We all go out and use whatever abilities we have to improve our lots. It’s the mammalian way. Accept your lot in life, it’s a lot better to be a selfish human over a used-and-abused, but always giving, tree.
    And in all seriousness, I still don’t get vegetarianism/veganism on the basis of pain to the animal, especially one that is in the process of being killed. I just don’t get it.
    Hate to say it, but when a human kills another human, they don’t care how much it hurts.

  • torontothegreat

    You are comparing killing animals to slavery? LMAO!
    Doing a basic human function such as eating (which is needed to LIVE) is not ‘selfish’ it’s necessary.
    Kudos to you for making a LIFESTYLE decision that I don’t agree with. However, don’t ever tell me or someone else that they are selfish just because they don’t believe in the same thing(s) you believe in. That is ridiculous.
    You can’t back up your point, that much is obvoius. Therefore I have nothing else to say and will simply quote something I believe sums up things quite well on this topic:

    Look, let me make something abundantly clear for people, who are so bereft of activities they feel like they gotta comment on mine.
    First of all being a vegetarian should never be associated with being a revolutionary or being open-minded., that’s a dietary choice.
    If someone wants to proliferate the type of ignorance we’re supposed to be fighting by thinking that, you’re just fucking yourself.
    I don’t go around promoting beef and poultry shoving it in people’s faces. I don’t castigate people for not eating steak sandwiches; and i would never diss someone for being a fucking broccoli-head, or living off of radishes, or eating grass or tofu.
    I like a lot of vegan cuisine, but the illogicality of expecting everyone to adopt their particular idea of what being healthy is is just preposterous.
    I’ve seen some of you herbivores; and if you want to argue health, y’all need to eat some kind of supplement because some of y’all are so skinny that it’s disgusting; looking like the only hip-hop motherfuckers on schindler’s list.
    Being a malnutrition-ass got nothing to do with being revolutionary or being on-point…

  • twiggyfan14

    Chickens, pigs, cows, and turkeys have the same ability to feel pain as you or I. Causing them to suffer when it is not necessary to do so, and it is not, as we can live perfectly well without eating animal products, is utterly selfish. The way animals are treated makes human misery pale by comparison. People whose own history of mistreatment should know better than to treat those they have power over in these ways.
    Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they are only animals.
    Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German Marxist philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist
    What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.
    Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Letter Writer

  • canuck1975

    I take it you won’t be spanking your emaciated children, either? How very commune-ist of you.
    So again, explain how the suffering of an animal that’s being killed is in any way relevant to being a vegetarian. I understand doing it for religious or health reasons, but those aren’t the people running around asking me to pity the poor cow tied to its pen.

  • Gauldar

    Yeah, seriously. Keep preaching that Marxist propaganda an a particular local apple-faced man will accost you with sour sticky litigation.

  • twiggyfan14

    The average meat eater in North America eats about 35 farm animals a year. That adds up to well over a thousand during the typical lifetime. To see the amount of suffering that each of these animals goes through, I invite you to the Vegan Outreach website (www.veganoutreach.org) which reports on standard agricultural practices done in modern farming. Remember, these animals have the same capacity to feel pain as you or I, so it is not hard to comprehend why decency calls upon us to withdraw support from this cruelty to animals.
    P.S. Can you bench press your bodyweight?

  • Marc Lostracco

    The average meat eater shares those farm animals a year with other meat eaters. They don’t eat 35 full animals. North American human omnivores each consume about a hundred kilograms of meat per year—mostly cow—but your average cow weighs about 460 kilograms, of which about 260 kilos is consumable meat.

  • Gauldar

    P.S. Can you bench press your bodyweight?
    Huh?

  • torontothegreat

    >The average meat eater shares those farm animals a year with other meat eaters.
    I guess he got his information from that ‘quality material’ he was talking about earlier.
    twiggyfan14, you do realize these animals would be extinct if we didn’t consume them right? These animals that have been bred for our consumption?

  • Gauldar

    This guy keeps going back to the idea of suffering, but completly ignores the fact that the animals are going to die anyways. If there is no point to their existance but to die and be used at food, is there a point to their suffering being gauged in the first place? Twiggy, what is your connection with these animals which have been bred for food, and how do they enter your life?

  • Ben

    you can’t prove that cows and chickens (and pigs and so forth) would be extinct if it weren’t for humans. I think it is likely that they would survive as a species without us.
    They wouldn’t exist in the numbers that they do now, they would slowly evolve away from the tendencies we bred them for, but they would probably go on without us.

  • lesliejeanie

    > So do we gauge amounts of suffering, and how much is too much?
    Why should we gauge it, causing any unnecessary suffering is too much. But the amount of suffering that these chickens go through is unimaginable. Most people believe it is wrong to hurt others. So why is it ok to cause this amount of pain to animals?
    As has been pointed out before, we offer pain relief to dying people, even though they are going to die. We don’t torture death row prisoners before we execute them. Why not? Because it is wrong to cause unnecessary pain to others. Because that is not how we would want to be treated if we were in their place. If you can’t imagine yourself in someone else’s place then you are selfish.

  • Gauldar

    Ok, well we can continue to take this argument back and forth, but we both know that at the end of the day your still not going to eat meat, and I am. So, anything else you would like to add?

  • canuck1975

    I wonder if the poor Gazelle on the African savannah feels pain when the sharp teeth of the tiger bite into it. Maybe we should start regulating nature and outlaw all pain when animals are killed to be food.
    Yes. It’s official. I’m rolling my eyes, quality literature be damned.

  • rek

    I would like to note that chicken is delicious.

  • twiggyfan14

    Let’s speak accurately, at the end of the day you choose to be selfish and support cruelty to animals. Chickens sent to slaughter weigh about 5 pounds. These little birds make up most of the animals consumed by North Americans, with each person eating about 34 of those birds a year. The numbers come from USDA statistics.
    If I thought that I could get decent behavior from tigers and other large predators, I would talk with them about not being cruel to other animals. As it is, they do not seem to have the mental capacity to think in moral terms. We do. However, it is worth noting that we are the only species that puts other animals through such misery and prolonged suffering. 200 years ago it was thought that Black people and Red people existed just to be slaves for whites. That this was their “purpose” was used to rationalize the injustice and mistreatment they received. Pigs and chickens quickly revert to their wild behaviors once freed from confinement, and their wild populations still do exist, so they would do pretty well if freed from our tyranny.

  • Marc Lostracco

    twiggyfan14: Just to continue being accurate—not that it really matters to your point anyway—most meat consumed in Canada and the U.S., by volume, is beef. By far. Ethics aside, beef is also our primary source of protein and crucial source of many vitamins.
    That being said, it’s healthier eaten in moderation.
    Also, every carnivore/omnivore species puts other animals through misery and prolonged suffering. We’re not “the only ones,” as you mention. We, however, do it spectacularly and disproportionately.

  • canuck1975

    Has hell frozen over? I agree with rek on something!
    Outside of that, morals are overrated. People’s morals brought us far too much suffering. I think if we focussed more on how we treat EACH OTHER rather than focussing on the pain an animal that’s about to be killed is feeling, we’d be much better off.
    Instead, we have people killing people over oil. Dumb.

  • Gauldar

    Twiggy,
    Let’s speak accurately, at the end of the day you choose to be selfish and support cruelty to animals.
    Tell you what, I keep being selfish and you keep being self righteous. You can continue to keep patting yourself on the back about what a great human being you are. Good boy, good.
    If I thought that I could get decent behaviour from tigers and other large predators, I would talk with them about not being cruel to other animals.
    Won’t happen, no matter how much you talk to it if you could. If you feel self righteous enough that their killing must end you can always try your best to make them extinct. That will of course have repercussions on the eco-system though. Herbivore population will boom, over consuming trees and plants causing erosion. Yada, yada.
    200 years ago it was thought that Black people and Red people existed just to be slaves for whites.
    Dude, pick up an ancient history book, it happened 2000 years ago and had nothing to do with the colour of ones skin.Slavery was about cultural status, bottom end work force, and property.
    P.S. Can you bench press your bodyweight?
    I still don’t get it, what’s your point?

  • rek

    I eat way more than 34 chickens a year.

  • twiggyfan14

    You got me here. I spend hours each week working to end animal suffering just so that I can feel self righteous. Entertain the possibility that there are people on the planet who simply care about others and principles like fairness and justice. Canuck, what is it that you are doing to help human beings that could not be done without supporting the brutal treatment of animals? The fact of the matter is that we have relatively little control over how humans treat each other, while we have complete control over whether or not hundreds to thousands of chickens will suffer horribly and die for our rather whimsical desire to eat their corpses.

  • torontothegreat

    >Entertain the possibility that there are people on the planet who simply care about others and principles like fairness and justice
    >The fact of the matter is that we have relatively little control over how humans treat each other, while we have complete control over whether or not hundreds to thousands of chickens will suffer horribly and die for our rather whimsical desire to eat their corpses.
    That’s one of the largest contradictions I’ve ever read.
    So basically you’ve given up on the human race and have such made fond saving animals bred for human consumption?
    Man, whoever emotionally hurt you to that point should be shot themselves…

  • twiggyfan14

    My point is that we are not directly responsible for the suffering and death of any humans, unless we are batterers, rapists, or killers. But we are responsible for the terrible suffering and deaths of hundreds to thousands of animals during the course of our lives, and something as simple as changing our diet can spare all those animals that intense suffering. I work over 40 hours a week as a Social Worker, so I think that speaks to my belief in the importance of alleviating human suffering. Caring about humans while sentencing hundreds to thousands of animals to miserable lives of suffering for reasons of our pleasure is very inconsistent and makes me doubt the genuineness of your caring for others be they human or nonhuman.

  • Gauldar

    This post keeps coming up in the “Recent Comments” list… that’s it, you’ve convinced me. I tried so hard to avoid it, but seeing that photo of the big huge bucket I have a craving for some KFC. This is going to screw with my weight loss plan (not really a plan to begin with), but damn, seeing it makes my mouth water. Lucky for me there were some coupons left on the bulletin board in the kitchen at work.

  • Gauldar

    I can feel the grease coating my intestines this very moment.

  • torontothegreat

    twiggyfan14,
    You’re a social worker and you believe there is nothing we can do to help our fellow humans?
    wow… just wow.
    >My point is that we are not directly responsible for the suffering and death of any humans.
    So, who is? The boogie man?
    >sentencing hundreds to thousands of animals to miserable lives of suffering for reasons of our pleasure
    lol. I’ve replaced my vibrators with chickens and cows, I’m thinking of getting a llama to replace my Wii.
    Let me ask you something.
    What would happen to the food chain if we all of a sudden stopped eating these domesticated animals?
    What would we do with these animals, bred for our consumption?
    If we ‘truely’ cared about them, we couldn’t just set them free, that would be an imminent death sentence. Believe me, the cow will suffer much more at the jaws of a pack wolves (especially cause they’ll start eating it while it’s still alive) then it would getting electrocuted or having it’s throat cut.

  • twiggyfan14

    Again, I point out that we are not directly responsible for the suffering and death of any humans unless we are battering, raping or killing people. There are certainly things that we can do to help stop human suffering, and I do spend over 40 hours a week doing that on my job. Clearly I believe that there are things that we can do to help our fellow humans. I just extend that compassion to those who are the greatest victims of violence.
    We are the consumers who sentence about 35 animals a year to terrible suffering and death simply because we like to eat them. We can live perfectly well without eating animal products, so choosing to eat animal products is not necessary, but done so for reasons of pleasure. In fact vegetarians and vegans have lower body mass index (less fat), lower rates of heart disease, cancers, and type 2 diabetes than meat eaters. We breed farm animals at a rate of 10 billion a year just for North America. So, as more and more people choose a nonviolent diet, fewer and fewer animals will be bred to suffer and die. Wild animals taken by wolves typically suffer much less than any animal farmed and then killed for consumption by humans.