Okay - why did the chickens cross the Road?

Image: BBC | CC

To pick up their new “chicken tuxedo’s” that elderly ladies in a Suffolk residential home have knitted for them of course!

The hens – who have come from battery cages and have lost their feathers due to the cramped conditions that all chickens suffer in battery cages – are sporting their new look after the Battery Hen Welfare Trust put out a plea to draw attention to the more than 20 million battery caged hens trapped in farms across the UK. Residents at the Uvedale Hall residential home in Needham Market took up the call and started knitting like there was no tomorrow.

The delightful dearies have been knitting away and have become firm friends of the featherless fowl – to the extent that some of the hens may be permanently rehomed at the residential home.

Bravo ladies, but everyone should do their part to reduce the suffering of all animals raised for the food industry by taking the 30 day ‘pledge to go veg‘

Every day, Woking train station is flooded with KFC employees, making their way to KFC HQ in this large, but otherwise unexciting town. Some will come through bright eyed and button nosed, some perhaps with hangovers, but all will – like most workers* – be looking around at their last remaining minutes of freedom before the working day begins.

So we took the next logical step and decided to place Pamela Anderson’s anti-Kentucky Fried Chicken billboard at this very same station. Well, I say ‘billboard’ but we actually tried for two. And you know what folks, both of them were rejected – how rude! A representative of Titan (the billboard company depriving Woking of these Pamela Anderson posters) said, “The poster is ‘attacking’ another brand, and that will not be allowed by the TOC who is the landlord”.

Hmm, perhaps they should think about the slightly larger ‘attack’ on the roughly one billion chickens killed for KFC every single year.

* Except employees of PETA. Apply here.

PETA’s gorgeous devotee has taken yet another opportunity to speak up for animals – in Australia, mate!

She headed down under for an appearance in Australia’s Big Brother (why can’t we get Pam in our Big Brother?!) and also hand-delivered a copy of her letter to Albert Baladi, managing director of KFC’s parent company in Australia, to staff at a local KFC. She gave each manager a copy of her explicit video, which reveals KFC suppliers scalding chickens to death in defeathering tanks and other atrocities.

In the letter, Pam explains:

“I’ve been in Australia filming Big Brother, in which my housemates and I are confined and sealed off from the outside world, much like the chickens who are crammed inside barns for KFC. Fortunately, I won’t be stomped to death, have my legs broken or be scalded to death in a tank of hot water—yet, as PETA’s undercover videos have revealed, the chickens raised for KFC’s restaurants in Australia often suffer these abuses.”

Pam urges Baladi to follow the Canadian lead, where landmark animal welfare reforms were made last month to ways in which chickens will be killed for Canada’s KFCs.

Yet again the “Freedom Food” scheme has come under heavy criticism, this time backed by video evidence and a Five News report – a recent investigation by our friends at Hillside Animal Sanctuary and Five News unearthed evidence of gross neglect of chickens at a farm in Norfolk.

The RSPCA’s Freedom Food scheme is sold to consumers as protecting the welfare of our feathered friends, it is unquestionably a big step up from the standard abuses of most factory farms; the thing that shocks me the most is that the RSPCA were so blasé about the whole affair and only yesterday removed their Freedom Food endorsement from the farm in question. Tell me if I’m wrong but aren’t the RSPCA supposed to be behind undercover investigations and the like, to prevent cruelty to animals?

Good job I wasn’t the undercover reporter or I may have failed to remove my foot from the farm owners’ behind! This kind of blatant mistreatment of animals – only uncovered through clandestine filming – happens daily throughout the nation. While it’s important for this case to be highlighted, I wouldn’t want people thinking that this is a one off thing, which it clearly isn’t – this is still a lot better than all the battery farms around the country. That should turn us all off eating eggs and chicken, at least.

Your ‘desperate to help chickens in need’ Matt

Did you know that the Head of European Food Safety Authority is calling for animal remains to be fed to farmed animals again? According to the plan, pigs will be fed to chickens and chickens will be fed to pigs. But the BSE ban of the 1990s was put in place for a reason. Have they gone mad? With the news that an animal variant of hospital superbug MRSA has entered the food chain because of the meat industry, surely our government should err on the side of caution in times like these?

Admittedly, there is a global food crisis and grain should not be diverted to farmed animals. Around the world, millions of people are starving to death, while millions of other people become obese from eating too much. But is this the way to go about it? Read this BBC World Service comment piece Bruce Friedrich (he gets around a lot, doesn’t he?!) wrote yesterday about the global food crisis, and how going vegetarian is the best option all round. Be prepared to be enlightened…

You have permission to scold me for that pretty awful pun. But it was all for a good reason, you see, as it’s Easter time! Traditionally a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and dabble in all things egg-shaped, cute fluffy animals and chocolatey, here at PETA we have a special message for you.

While surrounded by Easter eggs this weekend, spare a thought for hens still languishing on battery farms until the 2012 ban comes into place. Even then, they will still be confined for their eggs and millions of chickens slaughtered every year for their flesh, so come on – let’s give our feathered friends our support and stop eating them and what comes out of their, ahem… bums.

On a lighter note, scoff one of the many vegan chocolate eggs that are floating around the UK at the moment, including Green & Blacks, Montezuma’s, Booja Booja and at ALotOfChocolate. If you can’t get one in time, there’s always next week, and the week after, and… Who needs an excuse to eat chocolate anyway?