Ravens Sign Offensive Colonel Sanders

What do you get when you cross a raven with a chicken? A whole lot of grief from PETA. After learning that KFC has been named the “Official Chicken of the Baltimore Ravens,” PETA dashed off a letter to team owner Steve Bisciotti, alerting him to KFC’s refusal to implement even basic animal welfare improvements—including switching to an improved slaughter method—and urging him to end the team’s partnership with one of the nation’s leading bird killers. 
  

This chicken was still alive when plunged into a scalding-hot defeathering tank.

 
Bisciotti is known for his work with Catholic Charities, and PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich points out in his letter that scalding chickens to death in defeathering tanks, as KFC’s suppliers do, is hardly in keeping with Catholic doctrine.

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that we owe animals kindness and that it is ‘contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly,’” writes Bruce, a devout Catholic himself. “[S]litting birds’ throats while they are still fully conscious is a far cry from living up to the value of kindness toward animals.”

That sounds like something that birds of all feathers—and faiths—can agree on. You can take a step toward upping your kindness quotient by refusing to eat at KFC until it stops doing chickens wrong.

 
Written by Alisa Mullins