For Immediate Release:
2 March 2006

Pamela Anderson Sends Passionate Plea to KFC New Zealand

Executives Urged to Demand That Company Improve Conditions for Chickens

Auckland – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia-Pacific member Pamela Anderson has sent a graphic DVD – which she narrates – showing what happens to chickens before they end up in KFC’s buckets and an urgent letter to Victoria Salmon, CEO of the fast-food chain’s New Zealand operations, copied to KFC’s 11 area managers across the country. Anderson is demanding that KFC eliminate its suppliers’ worst abuses of chickens – including breeding and drugging birds to grow so fast that they often become crippled under their own weight and breaking birds’ bones as they crudely gather them for slaughter.

Anderson writes: “In light of current concerns over avian flu, it is up to corporations such as KFC to recognize the part they play in creating such crises. Experts the world over have pointed to factory-farming practices as one of the causes of avian flu,”

“Investigations by my friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and New Zealand-based Auckland Animal Action have found that chickens who are raised for KFC are bred and drugged to grow so large so quickly that many become crippled under their own weight. In addition, the birds are kept in severely cramped conditions, with up to 45,000 chickens per shed.”

At a broiler farm in West Auckland that was known to be supplying KFC, Auckland Animal Action investigators found live hens in cages with dead ones, whose bodies had been left to rot.

In addition to Anderson, PETA’s campaign has received high-profile support from Sir Paul McCartney, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Something for Kate, Jet and the Black Eyed Peas.

For more information and to view the video footage, please visit KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.

ENDS

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