ANOTHER KFC IS CLOSED!

How about the one on SE Powell and 50th. Always very busy, a lot of traffic and close to Franklin high school.

As bad as KFC is...I find it hard, if not impossible, to be joyful in an action carried out in the name of the "PeTA puppy killers". When an organization finds it advantageous to spend millions on billboards of Pamela Anderson's platic tits, than on actually saving animals, then that organization is no longer worthy of the title "friends of animals".

"As KFC continues to refuse to eliminate the worst abuses suffered by more than 850 million birds slaughtered for KFC joints each year, humane organizations worldwide are flocking(!) together to demand that KFC adopt PETA recommendations"

What are PETA's recommendations?

* Adopt the "Animal Care Standards" program. This would lower the amount of ammonia in the air in factory farms, improve the living spaces and lighting in chicken sheds, prohibit the intentional starving of breeding birds, and ensure that birds are provided with mental and physical stimulation.
* Switch to controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK). This would prevent live birds in slaughterhouses from being abused by workers, having their throats slit, or being scalded while they were still conscious. CAK would also improve conditions for workers and decrease contamination levels in chickens' flesh.
* Switch to mechanized chicken gathering. This would drastically reduce the number of broken bones and painful bruising that birds endure when factory-farm workers carelessly throw them into transport crates.
* Breed for health rather than rapid growth, and stop feeding drugs to chickens. This would reduce the rate at which birds suffer painful, crippling diseases and injuries, such as broken legs, heart attacks, and lung failures.
* Make all welfare standards transparent and verifiable. This would simply ensure that the animal welfare program is being adhered to through announced and unannounced independent audits (the results of which must be made available to the public through KFC's Web site).

So essentially PETA is asking for a kinder gently form of exploitation. These kind of welfarist campaigns do more to reinforce the commodification of animals as property or "chattel" in the eyes of the public, then to actually abolition animal slavery. Animal industry uses so called "green capitalism" and welfarism to ease the minds of consumers into thinking that what they are consuming is ethical, when it's really just the same exploitation repackaged as "cruelty free." PETA by focusing on animal suffering instead of animal usage is only helping to create a more efficient profitable killing machine. Animal rights organizations such as PETA and The Humane Society of the United States care more about raising money and celebrity endorsements then they do about ending animal industry and are in-fact only hurting the broader animal liberation movement as a whole.

 http://www.peta.org/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1341

"PETA makes no secret of having to euthanize most of the animals we take in. Although we do not run an adoption facility (we refer most adoptable animals to well-known shelters with a high rate of public traffic), we have managed to place animals in excellent, lifelong homes. For many of the animals we do accept-such as those who are injured, elderly, aggressive, or otherwise unadoptable-we are a "shelter of last resort," offering a humane death to those who would otherwise suffer a slow and painful end.

Unlike "no-kill" shelters, PETA does not refuse animals simply because euthanasia is the only humane option for them. Many of the animals we take in are brought to us because they have been rejected by other facilities. PETA receives calls every week from people who request that we euthanize their animals because they cannot afford to have them euthanized by a vet or because the animals would suffer excessive stress and pain if transported. PETA will not turn its back on these animals simply because they might make our "numbers" look bad.

The best way to save the lives of homeless animals is through spaying and neutering. PETA's mobile spay-and-neuter clinic focuses much of its work in disadvantaged neighborhoods, where we offer free and low-cost surgeries. To date, our clinic has sterilized tens of thousands of animals. With $45, a person could either care for a dog in a "no-kill" shelter for about three days or sterilize one animal, preventing the births of at least eight animals from that animal and her offspring in just one year as well as preventing the births of as many as 67,000 dogs in six years and 420,000 cats in seven years.

The scope of the companion animal overpopulation crisis is truly staggering: Every year, 3 to 4 million of the 6 to 8 million unwanted animals abandoned at animal shelters in the U.S. must be put to death because there are no suitable homes for them. People who are outraged by this deadly epidemic-and we all should be-can easily help by spaying or neutering their animal companions.

Please visit www.HelpingAnimals.com for more information.

...

PETA's not interested in playing a numbers game. When animals come to us most of them are absolutely horrible conditions. They are being ravaged by diseases and have been neglected for months and years. In these cases euthanasia is clearly the only compassionate decision we can make. People don't drop off healthy animals at PETA's office (since we don't have an adoption service). We deal with the worst of the worst situations."

I wonder how many sick & injured animals TGY has taken in & brought back to health. Zero? One? Ten? Forty-seven? Wait! The forty-eighth is just now arriving. And tomorrow there will be many more. And next month, hundreds. Take them all in, TGY, & make them well, healed, & happy. You can do it. It's easy.

People who criticize other animal advocates should visit the inside of factory farms as we have -- then shut up and continue getting whatever relief you can for these 50 billion suffering animals, incremental or total. Those who criticize PETA for anything need to watch "I Am An Animal: Ingrid Newkird and PETA" -- available for rental now. Bless you all anyway and please keep working for animals -- now!

I think this action was cool, and shutting down KFC is awesome. Peta has it's place. But I have to say that Ingrid Newkirk, for all the many good things she has done, is really twisted when it comes to a) pit bulls, and b) "euthanasia." Too many animals are put to death by PeTA. They pretend that this is the "only" option for many animals that could have been saved. (Newkirk thinks this is the "only" option for all pit bulls who come into her grasp. This is really screwed up.)

PeTA is one of the very few groups working for animals, and do they deserve some respect for that. But they also do some really fucked up things, and that should not be left unexamined. Only by seeing what is there do we have the capacity to make things better.