Fans Picket Oprah's Studio After Chicken Giveaway

Fans Picket Oprah Winfrey's Studio After Chicken Giveaway

by Martha Rosenberg
Chicago, IL

Click to enlarge

Oprah Winfrey's giveaway of free chicken dinners from Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in May did not play well in Chicago where her studios are located.

After shows about factory farming and puppy mills how could Oprah offer viewers the "blood gift" of an estimated 40,000 birds as free downloadable coupons for Kentucky Grilled Chicken meals fans asked?

Why wouldn't she take her own medicine after shows about vegan diets and trying one herself just months ago?

Couldn't the Queen of Empathy think of a better way to help viewers feed themselves during the recession than KFC, targeted by animal welfare groups for six years for its supplier cruelty captured--repeatedly--on video?

Even US News & World Report observed that promoting KFC whose chickens are held in "tightly-packed coops where the chickens are often unable to stand up or move," could be viewed as "hypocritical."

Outside Oprah's Harpo Studios in Chicago a day after the coupon offer, protestors held signs saying "KFC Tortures Animals" and "KFC's Secret Recipe: Animal Cruelty" showing pictures of bloody and Godforsaken chickens in a demonstration organized by Mercy For Animals.

"Birds raised and killed for KFC spend their short lives crowded by the tens of thousands in filthy, ammonia-filled sheds," say press materials. "Many of them endure crippling leg disorders and heart and lung problems induced by being genetically manipulated and dosed with massive amounts of growth-promoting antibiotics to grow to an unnatural size and at a dangerous rate."

Nor do any federal laws exist "to protect chickens from cruelty during their lives on factory farms, during transport, or at the slaughterhouse," adds Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy For Animals since chickens, turkeys, and other birds are excluded from USDA humane slaughter laws and not considered "animals." Hello?

Slaughterhouse workers confirm the cruelty.

The birds know exactly what is going on, they say, struggling when you take them out of their crates and shackle them upside down to the conveyer and struggling as the conveyer inches them toward the blade. Some birds miss the blade entirely and are boiled alive in defeathering tanks the chicken industry admits--two percent according to Gourmet magazine or180 million a year.
"When this happens, the chickens flop, scream, kick, and their eyeballs pop out of their heads," wrote chicken worker turned whistleblower Virgil Butler in an affidavit to Arkansas officials. "Then, they often come out the other end with broken bones and disfigured and missing body parts because they've struggled so much in the tank."

Even the well known slaughterhouse reformer Dr. Temple Grandin admits that boiled alive chickens, called red birds, are an industry problem.

As soon as Oprah made her offer, a feeder frenzy for the free meal coupons occurred--pun intended.

A KFC on East 42nd Street in New York City and one in Greensboro, NC had to be shut down by police when they ran out of food and customers at other KFCs perceived "slights" when denied their right to free chicken meals.

At some KFCs, customers got creative and printed duplicate copies of the free meal coupons in violation of one-to-a-customer rules. Hey, when you're out of work there's time to kill.

"We're about to go out of business because of people's dishonesty," a server named Rita at a KFC on Broadway across from Macy's in New York City told Scottland's Sunday Herald as a customer admitted to forging five coupons.

But pretty soon apologies from Oprah and KFC CEO Roger Eaton if not coupons were forthcoming and people were assured they would eventually get their free chicken meal when rain checks were issued.

As they say in Chicago when you can't get on a commuter train at rush hour--"There's a follower train directly behind you!"

Still those who lost a free chicken meal may heal more quickly than those who lost faith in Oprah herself.

30,000 viewers looked at a YouTube video opposed to the giveaway that observed people can't "get health from sick animals."

Others addressed Oprah directly:

"You were probably not moved… by chickens [shown on your show] packed into tiny cages even unable to spread their wings as chickens naturally do," wrote Suzana Megles on opednews.com. "By your giveaway, thousands more chickens will now inhabit the prison cages vacated by those who gave their lives, probably in a cruel fashion."

Martha Rosenberg is a columnist/cartoon who writes about public health.

© Scoop Media