My vegetarian lips too recently said a ‘wow’ after reading in a website that KFC franchisers in India are getting more than one million loyal customers everyday and about the executives’ explicit goal of starting more 500 outlets in India by the year 2015. KFC’s damn success over McDonalds in India may be because of that KFC uses chickens and not beefs, or maybe Indians don’t like chickens so they eat them, or maybe they like cows so they don’t eat them ...:) My concern about the millions of millions of chickens that die each year only for these taste- hungering mouths made me to do a small research on the internet and consequently my findings seem to be interesting to a great extent and sad too.
When Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC in the year 1991, there were enormous rumors spreaded against to KFC. One of such big rumor was what someone claimed that what KFC used were not the real chickens and they were claimed to be Genetically manipulated Organisms (GMOs). According to those claims, those GMOs don’t have heads, features and foots, blood and other neutrinos were pumped to them using a tube, and they can’t eat or feel. However, KFC was successful in proving that it was a pure rumor. Later, KFC was great successful and slowly started to enlarge its network of franchises in different countries and it slowly moved into Sri Lanka and India as well. Anyhow, the beginning days of KFC’s survival in India was pretty much difficult since it started receiving industrial and legal pressures not just in India but also globally that even pushed some changes in its international standardization.
Top executives in KFC were quick to respond to these macro-environmental pressures in a brilliant way. They implemented a new system called ‘gassing the birds’ before killing them or before hanging them so that KFC claimed that chickens feel no pain when they are dying or feel comfortable even in the minutes before their demise. This strategic implementation was more than enough to convince the stakeholders of Animal rights. Of course, this was the point that the executives in KFC had too started realizing that ‘fully-standardization’ doesn’t work in every country and they started in believing in the aspects such as ‘localization, cultural integration and flexible transferring of policies’. KFC outlets in India started to add Butter, boxes of fried rice and even Vege-burger in their menus. KFC Sri Lanka added a specific item ‘Egg-Kottu and fried rice’ in its menu card. In other words, KFC has a clear goal in its business strategies and on making more out of business, but in humanity?
There has been a recent report that reveals how inhumanly KFC suppliers behave though KFC’s legal contract claims that they only consider specific suppliers who maintain an exact standard that respects Animal rights. Bearing it not as logic, a latest denoting of KFC can stand for Kentucky Fried Cruelly. An Environment Editor McCarthy’s article also claims against KFC’s inhumanity. As pointed out in the Animal Rights Report, KFC’s chicken suppliers behave cruelly with chickens, some of such behaviors include jumping up and down on the alive birds, throwing them like balloons and not giving them the priority to live according to the animal rights standards.
In case of India, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) makes great exposures against KFC’s cruelty. From PETA, there have been several letters constantly written to the Indian KFC top executives, which request them to stop this cruelty right now. One such letter says ‘we cannot expect people to be vegetarians. But, at least we should allow these birds to live along with good living standards’. I think KFC should work hard to be Kentucky Fried Chicken and not to be Kentucky Fried Cruelly.
3 comments:
nteresting. I have been a KFC's regular customer for years in India. It started when I was in UK for my msc. I love the taste in KFC. I love their ice-cream, I love their friendliness.
But believe me, I just want forget chickens and their lives.I believe they will have a great life after death just because they make me water inside my mouth even whenever I think abt them or when feeling their good smell when passing any KFC outlet.
good article and it makes a sense too.
i like this article..well written
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