Warning, long response from the offical CP vegetarian coming. Feel free to skip it if you aren't interested.
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Ok. I've been a vegetarian for about six years. I don't preach my way of life on others by any means. I don't support PETA in most of what they do, because they are fanatics, and I don't like fanatacism whether I agree with the cause or not.
That being said, I thought I'd educate you all a bit as to what the KFC issue is really about. Its not about a bunch of crazy hippies that think you shouldn't eat chicken, not at all. It's about animal cruelty and corporate greed. A few years back PETA did a survey of all the major fast food chains. They made a list of recomendation to each of them on how they should change there procedures to make there food processing more humane. They then started campaigns aimed at each of them to raise public awareness.
Burger King followed their recommendatiins.. Then Wendy's did.. Then McDonalds finally did, and the campaigns against all of them were stopped. KFC is the only one that refuses to follow PETA's recomendations for ending animal cruelty in their poultry plants.
Let me tell you about the average life of a chicken at a poultry plant. They are crammed into giant barns holding tens of thousands of chickens. Each one has about exactly the amount of space they need to stand in and no more. The stench from the waste (which is not cleaned) is so overpowering that workers need to wear masks to protect them from the ammoia. They are fattened up beyond a natural state to the point where many of them suffer broken legs because they simply are not built to support the weight they are forced to put on. They have there beaks cut off so they won't fight amongst themselves which is necessary because they are given so little space to live in. When they are ready to be slaughtered (at only about two months old - a chickens natural lifespan is 10 years) they are packed, live, into crates and sent to the plant. They are put in a machine that hangs them upside down by there feet. They travel down a conveyor belt of sorts.. They are eletrocuted, but this usually doesn't kill or even render them unconcious, then they have their throats slit. Then, while still alive but bleeding to death, they are dumped in a huge vat of near boiling water which causes their feathers to fall out.
Sounds like fun huh? Also, the horrible conditions the chickens are kept in leads to disease. A large portion of the chickens develop skin conditions, infections filled with puss, and other diseases. You know what happens to these chickens? You eat them too. So it's not just about animal cruelty, its about your health too. It used to be legal to slaughter and sell sick cattle also ("downer cattle") but then it was found that mad cow disease probably came from these sick cows so the USDA banned the process.
For much more detail than I wrote here feel free to visit
http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/
-Jason