Corporate Campaigns

PETA Wages Successful Animal Welfare Campaigns: Some Improvements Made, Many More Still Needed

Since October 1999, when we launched our "McCruelty" campaign against Fortune 500 company and fast-food-giant McDonald's, PETA has waged a series of successful campaigns urging the restaurant and grocery industries to improve conditions for the animals killed for their menus and shelves. PETA's current campaign against KFC urges the company to eliminate the worst abuses suffered by the more than 850 million chickens killed for its buckets each year.

PETA's successful campaigns against McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Safeway resulted in historic improvements in the living conditions of farmed animals in North America.

Although the guidelines that were developed as a result of these campaigns are important because they recognize that farmed animals have specific needs and interests that should be protected, they fall short of eliminating the vast majority of abuses that farmed animals suffer. Even with the new guidelines, shocking cruelty is still the norm—the abuses are so horrible that they would warrant felony cruelty-to-animals charges in most states if dogs or cats were the victims:

• Pigs, chickens, and cows are drugged and bred to grow so fast that many suffer from crippling leg deformities and other ailments as a result of having bodies that grow too quickly for their organs and limbs to keep up with.
• Mother pigs are confined to narrow gestation crates, where they are forced to live amid their own feces and urine for most of their lives. Their babies have their tails cut off, their testicles ripped from their scrotums, and the ends of their eye teeth cut out—all without any pain relief.
• Hens raised for their eggs are debeaked (i.e., mutilated) without painkillers, and between five and 11 hens at a time are crowded into tiny, filthy cages that are so small that they can't even spread a wing.
• Chickens and turkeys raised for their flesh are crowded into huge sheds by the tens of thousands, where they are neglected and forced to live amid their own waste and among the decaying corpses of their shedmates. Because the Humane Slaughter Act, the only federal law designed to protect animals at slaughter, excludes chickens and turkeys—even though they constitute more than 98 percent of the land animals eaten in the United States each year—they have their throats slit while they are still conscious and are often scalded to death in defeathering tanks.
• Cows have their horns ripped or burned out of their skulls, have their testicles cut out of their scrotums, and are branded (i.e., they receive third-degree burns)—all without any pain relief.
• Fish on aquafarms spend their entire lives inside cramped, filthy enclosures, and many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. Conditions on some farms are so horrendous that 40 percent of the fish may die before farmers can kill and package them for food.

Furthermore, not a single measure has been taken to allow pigs, chickens, cows, or fish raised in factory farms to engage in their natural behaviors. These animals are never given the chance to raise their young, build nests, breathe fresh air, play, or do anything that is natural and important to them.

You Can Help Animals in Factory Farms!

• Go vegetarian today—it's the easiest and best way to protect animals from abuse. Order a free vegetarian starter kit full of recipes, shopping and health tips, and more.
• Support PETA's campaign urging KFC to eliminate the worst abuses that its animals suffer, such as broken wings and legs and being scalded to death in defeathering tanks.