PETA's Kentucky Fried Cruelty, Inc. Campaign

A year and a half after calling off their campaign against fast-food giant McDonald's, the vegan campaign coordinator of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), contacted Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) to warn them that they would be the next target. He pointed out in his letter that while many of KFC's competitors had convened advisory panels to help them investigate the welfare of animals raised and slaughtered for their businesses, KFC appeared completely uninterested in the issue. PETA would rather not engage KFC in a campaign, but if the company refused to put together an animal welfare panel and to begin to look into the issue of how to raise and slaughter their chickens more humanely, all the leaflets, action alerts, posters, billboards, T-shirts and press releases PETA was now preparing would be dedicated to KFC and its cruel treatment of chickens. In January 2003, PETA, fed up with what it saw as KFC's lack of open communication, public misinformation, and outright stonewalling on change, announced a campaign against the company to the media in a news event replete with bloody descriptions of the cruelties of KFC's animal factories. Now it was time for Kentucky Fried Chicken to respond.