PETA pushes for slaughter reforms, ruffles feathers by passing out 'Unhappy Meals' to McDonald's customers

PETA and McDonald's have long been arch-nemeses, but after a long period of relative calm, the animal rights group has ratcheted up the rhetoric recently. Its tactic: Passing out "Unhappy Meals," which include a rubber chicken stained with fake blood, a small paper cutout showing Ronald McDonald wielding a bloody knife and a T-shirt bearing the logo "McCruelty."  

Needless to say, not everyone is pleased with the approach. At a McDonald's restaurant in Albany, N.Y., some parents fumed when confronted with PETA's message. "I don't want my son to be around something like this," one mother, who'd brought her son to eat lunch at the fast-food chain, told Albany's Fox 23 News. "This is not fair for a child."

But PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman doesn't seem terribly concerned about the criticism.  "If kids knew how unhappy the chickens who are killed for Happy Meals really are, they'd lose their lunch," Reiman said in a statement. "And if parents don't want them to know, then the decent thing to do is to refuse to take them to eat [at McDonald's]."

The issue at the heart of PETA's complaint is the method by which chickens are killed to produce McDonald's menu items such as Chicken McNuggets. The primary method used by McDonald's U.S. suppliers is called electric immobilization, or electric stunning. 

According to PETA and other animal advocacy groups, the electric stunning method is inherently cruel to the birds, in part because the level of electricity used to immobilize them isn't enough to render them insensible to pain. Additionally, PETA says, many birds stunned using this method suffer broken wings and legs as a side effect of the process, which involves manual handling by a slaughterhouse worker.

An alternate method called controlled-atmosphere stunning is less cruel and eliminates physical pain for the birds, PETA says. In this method, oxygen is removed from the birds' atmosphere without them ever being handled by a worker, and they die of anoxia, which PETA argues is a painless process. Controlled-atmosphere stunning is a fairly common method of slaughtering poultry in Europe, but not widely used in the United States.

PETA's goal, then, is to induce McDonald's to mandate controlled-atmosphere stunning as the method of slaughter used by its poultry suppliers.

No dice, says McDonald's.

Bob Langert, the fast-food giant's vice president of corporate social responsibility, insisted to Slashfood that McDonald's works in conjunction with "leading independent animal-welfare experts" to address concerns about animal-welfare issues relating to its food production. 

But, Langert continued, no large-scale poultry suppliers in the United States use the controlled-atmosphere stunning method, meaning that "demands to purchase chickens from this method to meet McDonald's supply needs are not viable."

But, PETA says, this excuse is precisely the reason they're going after the giant of the fast-food industry. If McDonald's, with all its corporate clout, were to demand comparatively humane slaughter methods from its suppliers, the path would be cleared for other restaurants to follow.

As for the group's methods -- and it's hardly the first time PETA has ruffled feathers with its publicity-friendly strategies -- at least a few McDonald's customers said they would remember the Unhappy Meals' message before they ate another McNugget. "Look at these chickens," a woman told Fox 23. "It's sad, and I love animals."

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: A sticker included in PETA's "Unhappy Meals." Credit: PETA

Comments

[Mir]

Bravo PETA.

[DanR]

I expect that if you did such things to animals at home you could be charged with animal cruelty. Yet when a giant corporation does it daily on a massive scale it's just fine?

[Smith and Wesson]

Just use a 12 gauge shot gun. The chickens will never know what hit em. Case close.

[Trish Gibson]

Just because what McDonald's does to animals is ugly, gross and cruel, doesn't mean we should shelter ourselves from the facts. If we are bothered by how animals are treated in slaughterhouses, it is because there is a real moral question at stake. If we don't like the ugly face of cruelty, we should reform the meat industry. If it really bothers us, we have the option of not eating meat, so that animals do not have to die these horrible deaths.

[Maru Vigo]

Mc Donald's is a company that profits from animal suffering and abuse and the public -specially children - have the right to know about their dirty tactics.
Not only the animals are hurt by their tactics and products. The damage they do to children making them unhealthy and obese is equally obscene.

[alice in LALA land]

Kids can;t post here?.. well maybe they shoud be able to on this topic... how about we show them childbirth? how about we show them surgeries?. so when they need an operation they will be too AFRAID to have one.. too afraid to have children... the wordl needs to eat...Peta is a disgusting moronic group of MONEY makers who have no qualms about scaring children with lies and deceit.. talk about MONSTERS..

[Linda H]

The wording of your poll is too conciliatory towards PETA. They are not well-intentioned. PETA would like to see the extinction of all domestic animals and the end off all relationships between people and animals. They kill most of the animals turned in to their shelter, approx 95% while the shelter down the road saves more than 60%. Don't believe their rhetoric that they only get the hard cases for which death is a blessing. Not so say some of the people that have surrendered animals to them. In NC PETA employees took puppies from a vet that had saved them, promising they would be easy to find good homes for. The PETA people killed the dogs before even leaving town and abandoned their bodies in a dumpster behind a grocery story. They did this repeatedly before being caught. PETA defended them and paid for their lawyers. PETA is also a spokesman for violent animal rights terrorists. No, PETA is not well-intentioned. I wouldn't have so much of a problem with them if they were honest about their goals, but they collect money from animal lovers with lies about helping puppies and kittens. I'm involved in animal rescue and PETA is no friend of ours.

[Linda H]

Of course PETA has ratcheted up the rhetoric recently. Their tactics are to ask for some concession and once they get it they wait awhile and then ask for something more. It's called 'moving the middle.' Compromising with PETA is like compromising with Hitler (I wouldn't make the Nazi comparison but PETA made it first, comparing killing chickens for food to the Holocaust).

[Reggy]

Any reletively intelligent, thinking person should be able to tell that PETA is compossed of nothing but a bunch of crazies and yet people are suckered into donating thousands each year, donating to a group that actually does nothing for animals or it's members. But boy, do the heads of it make out!

Come on people, take the time to *learn* something and leave the crazies to one another.

[Reggy]

Ok, I will post another comment;

The only reason PETA wants to get to the children is so they can brain-wash them with their propaganda. Get them nice and young, maybe they'll never catch on that most of what they preach is pure BS.

[Person Eating Tasty Meats]

Peta and the HUSU should put "their" ill-gotten money where there mouth is and really be responsible for the rescue outcome of the propaganda they use to con money from people. These greedy orgs need to get our of our lives. The government does enough damage and if the criteria for slaughter is not being met, we have more government inspectors to investigate. If peta thinks they are not doing their job, perhaps they should contribute some of their suckered millions to help the inspection effort. I don’t believe MeDonalds is actually killing animals. I think they buy frozen patties. LOL And, I don’t like this animal rights activist SMALL opinion with LOTS of money influencing my children with their crap. We hunt and we fish and we eat meat! Just because someone else does your dirty work for you doesn’t mean it’s suddenly wrong. Get a grip America! You are so brain washed and the timing isn’t a coincidence!

[Bob]

What make them think suffocating chickens doesn't make them suffer? Terorist groups should not be given news coverage.

[Nancy]

PETA has NO room to tell anyone if, how, or when to kill anything. I don't know how any group can claim to love animals and annually kill 94-97% of the ones sent to them without even attempting to find them homes. It is not their place to try to educate anyone's children either. THAT is a responsibility left to the parents. PETA needs to go crawl under a rock and stay there!

[Dott]

If ANYONE handed this nonsense to my grandchildren there would be a small war declared on the spot. Humans are omnivores- we are the top of the food chain and that is a fact of life.

PETA and HSUS have the base idea that a fish is a dog is a cow is a human being. All have equal standing in their eyes. Can't ANYONE see the madness behind this kind of thinking? The people who want to rename fish as "sea kittens" so that no one will want to fish any more are the same ones frightening small children with "unhappy meals."

Let's ask PETA about the workers who killed "rescued" animals in their van and dumped the bodies in a food store trash bin. Did THOSE animals feel anything but fear and pain at the hands of the "saintly" vegans? How about the kill rate for PETA's ONE AND ONLY shelter, which approaches 98%. The major expense at the ONE shelter PETA runs? The huge walk-in freezer for dead animal bodies. Let's get real, people.

These deluded followers of Ingrid Newkirk do not have the best interests of any animals in their hearts, including the "animals" they consider us humans to be.

[PeTA hater]

PeTA is composed of radical, unethical, and potentially dangerous members. Their tactics border on terrorism. Enough said.

[Donna]

Why should anyone pay any attention to what PETA does? They are animal rights terrorists, who hate people AND animals, as evidenced by their 95%+ kill rate at the few facilities that they operate. "Better dead than subjugated by man" is basically their tenet in regards to animals. Money money money, and controlling everyone elses lives, that's what they're about.

[acko]

Peta is a business -- not an animal welfare group, with lots of money and not many facts. They collect money and pretend to care about animals and have done destroyed many adoptable pets in shelters. When the blood is off your hands (PETA) you can talk to others about how they should act.

[Stephanie]

Those hypocrites at PETA are at it again. PETA is not an animal welfare group. They are an animal rights group, who believe that even insects are equal to humans. They don't seem to mind killing dogs, cats or wildlife, though.
In 2007, PETA took in 8362 companion animals.
6466 were returned to owners, leaving 1896.
35 were transferred to other agencies.
They adopted out 17 (that's 5 more than the previous year).
One died in the facility.
They euth'd 1815. That's a 96% euthanasia rate (a huge improvement
from their 98% euth rate for the previous year).
Now this is really interesting: their wildlife stats for 2007: Out
of 181 animals, 5 were picked up dead, and 5 were released to the
wild. 171 wild animals were euthanized. Of the living wild animals,
they killed 97%.

source:
http://www.virginia.gov/vdacs_ar/cgi-bin/Vdacs_search.cgi?link_select=facility&f\
orm=fac_select&fac_num=157&year=2007

Hey, I used to send them money, back when I thought they were acting in the interest of animal welfare. Then someone made an accusation, and I began my own research in order to prove this assertion wrong. I was stunned to learn that the real agenda for these organizations is to end not only animal testing (which is really hypocritical, considering that Ingrid "Even if it resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it (animal testing)" Newkirk's second in command, Mary Beth Sweetland, is an insulin-taking diabetic), but also put an end to farming, hunting, pet & service dog owning, etc. So here I was, all steamed up and ready to defend them, and I discovered one shocking truth after another. They give the illusion of helping animals in order to get your money, and spend it all on salaries, political campaigns, & lobbying.

[maggie b]

If PETA wants to stop cruelty to animals they should disband and give the money to local shelters. PETA kills 97% of the animals it takes into its shelters. Their employees killed healthy dogs and kittens and dumped them in dumpsters minutes after taking them after promising to try to find them homes. PETA kills animals but wants to pull stupid stunts so they can try to get some other gullible person to send them money.

[Gail]

PETA - that's the organization in bed with the terrorist group, ALF, no? Like these wackos should talk! PETA has no good intentions. They want to eliminate all animal use - food, clothing, furniture, zoos, etc. NOt to mention that PETA has killed 97% of the animals it has "rescued."

[Dorothy]

PETA attacks McDonald's for how their suppliers slaughter chickens? Has anybody seen the verified reports to the State of Virginia in which PETA admits to "slaughtering" 97% of all animals turned into them? You want to talk hypocritical? PETA's goal (as is that of the HSUS) is the total elimination and use of any animal for anything. That ranges from no pets down to no eggs used to make vaccine (think H1N1) PETA ran college campus ads, "Drink beer, not milk."
They know full well the impact they can have on children. I think McDonald's needs to sue for copyright infringement for using something that looks very much like Ronald McDonald.

[DrRosset]

These animal rights radicals believe that they have the right to lie and steal to get what they want. They lie to us and our children to force their goal of ending the lives of all domestic animals. You ask why they want to do this? The closest answer I could find is that Ingrid Newkirk enjoys killing animals. She has Munchausen by proxy and in her own words she would come in early on her first job and put all of the animals in the DC shelter to death. HSUS also hates animals which is run by the egotistical Wayne Pacelle who has said so many times that he has no particular affinity or love for animals.

The following statement was taken from an animal rights blog and is made by someone who identifies him or herself as brad-668559

brad-668559
"we must accept suicide as a means of pop. control. only when the old, the sick, the weak, the crippled are disposed of will animals find a home."

Here is another comment from these sickos which your can find on the Thomas Paine corner blog devoted to these radicals' agenda against American ideals. The following quote made by the author and creator of this web site is Jason Miller "Hunting accidents are a beautiful manifestation of karma. Nearly every US citizen in the animal liberation movement has the same 2nd Amendment right to bear arms as hunters and probably loves the outdoors as much (if not more than) those who hunt. Wouldn’t it be unfortunate if there were a sudden epidemic of hunting accidents?" He is adovcating for othe animal rights radicals to go out and kill people. This statement of his denies that his group is for ending the suffering of sentient beings. When you adovcate killing people because they need to eat and are being true to their biology as all other animals are then you are nothing more than a terrorist.
The animal rights movement portrays itself simply as a group of people who are concerned with the mistreatment of animals. That’s an easy position to sell in America where a large portion of population has pets. However, there is an undercurrent of violence, extremist positions, and more startling is the anti-human views that runs through the animal rights movement. Remember the end game of groups like the misnamed Humane Society of the United States is indeed to eventually drive all meat producers out of business by making it impossible for them to be profitable and by raising the price of meat so that it becomes a luxury item. People who are giving their money to these groups need to understand that it is used to push an agenda that is intended to sever completely the human animal bond. It is not to save wildlife or to protect domestic animals. HSUS Agenda, We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. …One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding ** Wayne Pacelle * Director of HSUS, “Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, “We’d be against it.”- Ingrid Newkirk, PETA (_Washington_Post * “The optimum human population of earth is zero” .-Dave Foreman, Earth First! “I would be overjoyed when the first scientist is killed by a liberation activist.” ** Vivien Smith of ALF (USA Today). BRAD and Jason Miller represent the radical animal rights leftists of today who have been suckered into this animal rights philosophy which is about the end of mankind. These two organizations, (PETA is banned in Germany as a Terrorist organization) are invading the public school education system to educate the American youth against animal ownership and against medical research. BRAD’s quote is similar to many found on AR blogs and it says it all about this new animal rights philosophy. Now we see the same point of view appearing in the House version of the new public health insurance proposal, but this rationing issue has been removed from the Senate version. If you really want to know about this radical movement and its intent to end the American individual property rights and everything that makes America free you can find this idotic group on the web. Just remember they are using animal rights to fund their movement to end the American way of life and freedoms we now enjoy. Notice the Swastika on their logo and you have a real idea of where this group of misfits is intending to take this great country. Don't buy into this traitorist terrorist group and don't let them brainwash your children either.

[Joel Bartlett]

As long as McDonald's is allowed to target kids so should PETA. Isn't it really that simple?

[claudia]

animals shouldnt be treated the way they are. its selfish humans who haveto eat everything. its stupid. dont u care about others than urself. humans and animals are =. any1 who says theyre no is retarded.

[ra44mr2]

Well thanks PETA you have made my decision for me. Now for the next few weeks i will make it a point to go to mcdonalds as often as i can and ALWAYS get the chicken nuggets. Without you i would have to decide what to eat which is always a pain.

[Giorgion]

McDonald's pose as innocent good company in the world. The company has projected that image for many years. Yet, behind that "untrue" and community oriented facade, they practice unacceptable methods and cruelty to poultry and animals. This must be brought to the attention of all people including children. The "don't let the children know" hypocricy must stop. How can so many parents be that naive and stupid? Is there more dirt under the carpet? Dig deeper PETA, people must wake up.
CONGRATULATIONS to PETA for bringing this issue to forefront.

[Michelle Setaro]

Thank you to the Peta supporters for having the moral courage to put the spotlight on such atrocities committed by McDonalds who profit off egregious cruelty to the millions of birds they pay their suppliers to kill. Parents shouldn't conceal animal cruelty from children so that it can be perpetuated. Boycott McDonalds until they do the right thing!

[SPURWING PLOVER]

PETA wanks should leave the kids alone and quit trying to push their stupid philosephies on others

[Kris L]

After reading some of the comments on this page, I can agree that perhaps PETA's motives for this campaign weren't the most noble.
However, the message that this event brings is one that should be considered over the motives meaning of PETA: fast food is essentially damaging our children's futures, especially when children, especially those who are aged 8 and under, are vulnerable to any form of advertising, especially McDonalds', consisting of enticing figurines and cartoons.. They are being held from the truth, and I believe that although PETA's approach was quite shocking, after reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, many of the facts posed by this campaign are true, and we should all be more cautious when we feed our children filth from McDonalds.