Tag: Chickens

United Poultry Concerns Plans Anti-KFC Protests

United Poultry Concerns recently announced a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals-style protest against KFC on July 29, 2001.

These folks need a lot of work to match the sophistication of PETA’s media grabbing, but there was this hilarious nugget in their press release,

Much sweeter [than eating chickens] is the sight of happy chickens at UPC’s sanctuary in Virginia. “When people meet the chickens and see how nice they are, they stop thinking them of food,” says UPC protest co-organizer Franklin Wade. “At our KFC protest, each person who sees our signs or takes a leaflet must think about these birds and consider the truth.”

Yeah, if we could only sit down and have a long conversation with a chicken, we’d understand our shared humanity… er, scratch that. I suspect what most people will consider after taking a UPC leaflet is, “Why couldn’t they have given me a coupon off a bucket of wings instead?”

Source:

Chicken rights activists target KFC for Protest; “Stop Slaughter of the Innocent, Go Veggie,” They Urge. United Poultry Concerns, Press Release, July 26, 2001.

UPC Protest Against the Delmarva Chicken Festival

If any animal rights group has a shot at unseating People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as far as sheer nuttiness goes, clearly it will be United Poultry Concerns. Like PETA, their press releases are often so far over the top that they sometimes read like parodies.

A couple weeks ago, for example, UPC put out a press release urging people to protest at the Delmarva Chicken Festival held in Machipongo, Virginia. This is a large festival sponsored by the poultry industry. Emulating PETA’s press release style, the headline that UPC chose trumpeted the fact that “United Poultry Concerns Will Protest at the Delmarva Chicken Festival of Sickness, Fear, and Death.” Sounds like the opening line from some third-rate splatterpunk novel.

UPC is also certain to cover all of its bases in its objections to the poultry industry so as to make sure not to leave out any group potentially offended by the poultry industry. The press release goes on to say,

What’s to celebrate? Poisoned Well Water? 4 billion pounds of raw waste a year? 14 million pounds of phosphorus? 49 million pounds of nitrogen? 600 million birds breathing toxic ammonia? A million tons of manure each year? Chickens fed cattle brains? Repulsive smelling fields? Decaying carcasses? Polluted water? Carpel [sic] tunnel syndrome? Salmonella? Campylobacter? Listeria? Arsenic? Pfiesteria piscicida? Cruelty to birds? Millions of gallons of slaughterhouse waste trucked to Maryland from Delaware? Endless killing? Being owned by gangsters?

Whew. Was that a press release or a stream of consciousness assignment for Introduction to English Composition? And don’t forget the alternative vision UPC offers,

By contrast, United Poultry Concerns will proclaim the benefits of a vegetarian diet: Respect for life. Less pollution. Less sickness. Less suffering. Less death. More beauty. More happiness. More health. More peace.

You too shall see the vegetarian promised land. They could start delivering on the “more peace” promise by leaving us omnivores alone.

Source:

United Poultry Concerns Will Protest at the Delmarva Chicken Festival of Sickness, Fear, and Death. United Poultry Concerns, Press Release, June 16, 2001.

Genetically Engineered Chickens Lay Protein-filled Eggs

One of the long standing goals of genetic engineering was to modify animals to express designer proteins in milk or eggs. Producing proteins in the laboratory is extremely expensive, and modifying animals to produce the proteins could dramatically speed up medical research.

Over the weekend, the team that cloned Dolly the sheep announced they had achieved this milestone. Several news agencies reported that the Roslin Institute, which became famous for its sheep cloning success, has successfully created a genetically modified chicken that lays eggs containing relatively large amounts of proteins that will greatly aid the drug discovery process.

Each chicken will lay about 250 eggs each year, and each egg will contain about 100 mg of the protein for which the chicken is coded. The protein produced is controlled by genetic material inserted into the single cell nucleus that is used to create the chicken, so the protein expressed in the egg can be changed to whatever researchers want to study.

Nicknamed “pharming” by some, ten years ago this sort of technique was purely the stuff of science fiction. Today, thanks to medical researchers, it is a science fact that could revolutionize medical research and treatments for human diseases.

Source:

Dolly scientists create cancer-fighting chicken eggs. Line One News, December 3, 2000.

Dolly team creates designer chicks. The BBC, December 3, 2000.

Washington Anti-Fur Initiative May be Challenged; Oklahoma Anti-Cockfighing Petition Rejected

A few weeks ago animal rights activists in Washington state successfully passed an initiative that not only bans the use of steel-jawed leg-hold traps, but also bans outright the sale of fur and certain poisons in the state. The Inland Northwest Wildlife Council is considering challenging the ban on fur and poison as unconstitutional. An initiative that Washington voters passed in 1999 was ruled unconstitutional because it tackled too many issues. The initiative approved this year went so far as to ban a poison, sodium fluoroacetate, which isn’t even registered in the state — anyone using it would be breaking the law already.

In Oklahoma, meanwhile, a petition drive calling for an initiative to ban cockfighting failed when the Oklahoma Gamefowl Breeders Association demonstrated that more than 40 percent of the petition signatures were invalid. By comparing the signatures on the petition to a statewide database of registered voters, a large percentage of the petition signatures were demonstrated to have been forged, registered more than once, or came from people not registered to vote in Oklahoma.

Sources:

I-713 violates constitution, council says. Fenton Roskelley, The Spokesman-Review, November 15, 2000.

Invalid signatures prove need for reform, cockfighters claim. Brian Barber, TulsaWorld.Com, November 15, 2000.

United Poultry Concerns Wants Rubber Chicken Recalled

The only thing dumber than OddzOn’s rubber chicken candy dispenser has to be United Poultry Concerns’ Franklin Wade who has been fighting a war against the stupid novelty item.

Okay, usually OddzOn produces some of the coolest toys in the world — their Vortex football rocks — but what is the point of a plucked rubber chicken with a Tootsie Roll lollipop sticking out of its throat? Sounds like something they would sell at a place like Spencer Gifts, but Rite Aid carried these things for a while before protests from animal rights activists led them to pull them off the shelves.

Still some convenience stores and other places are selling them and Wade put out a press release today calling for activists to “protest to the store manager if you see this item for sale.”

Which is certainly their right but what exactly was going on in Wade’s mind when he wrote in a UPC press release,

It [the rubber chicken] encourages children and others to regard animal suffering and death — the cruel treatment of chickens especially — as amusing. It has a strong pornographic implication along with cruelty to animals.

Now I do not know about Wade’s lifestyle, but I’ve seen plenty of rubber chickens and none of them exactly turned me on. I guess sex appeal is in the eye of the beholder.

Source:

Stop production, distribution, and sale of cruel and obscene chicken toy. Press release, United Poultry Concerns, November 9, 2000.

PETA Stalks Singer Kenny Rogers

To protest the horrors of eating
chicken, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is paying someone to dress in a giant celery costume and
follow singer Kenny Rogers around on his latest world tour. Rogers lends
his name to a chain of restaurants called Kenny Rogers’ Roasters.

According to a PETA press release,
the 7-foot tall bright green celery stalk will be “carrying a sign that
reads, “Kenny Kills Chickens,” and urge Rogers to become a vegetarian
(apparently under PETA’s long-standing view that people want dietary advice
from activists dressed in outlandish costumes.)

This is not the first time
PETA has harassed Rogers. In 1997, according to PETA’s press release, it sent
activists dressed up as chickens to Rogers’ wedding holding signs reading,
“Kenny: ‘I Do’ Torture Chickens?” And they wonder why Rogers refused
to respond to their requests to meet and discuss their concerns about
his chicken suppliers.

Source:

Giant
“Celery” To “Stalk” Kenny Rogers At Florida Concerts. People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals, press release, December 2,1999.