In 2005, PETA released footage from an undercover investigation into a slaughterhouse run by KFC Supplier Tyson Foods, which showed live chickens’ heads being ripped off, among other acts of unbelievable cruelty. Two new PETA investigations of the company, which have just been released today, reveal that Tyson has done nothing to prevent the torture it inflicts on these animals—and provide gruesome examples of what KFC’s continued refusal to do anything about the cruelty that is endemic to its suppliers means for the animals used by the company. Please click here to write to KFC and Tyson Foods and demand that they follow through with PETA's recommendations to stop this hideous abuse.

It’s well known that chicken fat may kill you by clogging your arteries, but did you know that it may also crash your car?

Earlier this week chicken fat that leaked from a waste truck onto the roadway caused at least four accidents and made a smelly mess in PETA’s home state of Virginia. One injured person was even taken to a hospital.

According to news reports a truck hauling waste chicken grease from a Perdue Farms plant left a valve open, and the fat leaked onto U.S. Route 13 from the plant to the Maryland state line.

According to one Virginia State Police Sergeant, the gunk caused a "really funky" odor. No kidding.

The moral of the story is that if you eat meat you’re causing car accidents—and even sending some people to the hospital. Make America’s highways safe by ordering an emergency Free Vegetarian Starter Kit now.

- Joel

Les Moonves, CBS News/Creative Commons

The real villain here is a fellow named Les Moonves, who runs CBS, and under whose leadership the network has become renowned for soliciting and airing acts of cruelty to animals in an effort to boost ratings. Most people are familiar with the Survivor stunts where the contestants are made to kill animals or drink their blood, but apparently Moonves and CBS felt a need to take the shock factor up just another notch by having kids do the killing, as happened in the latest episode of Kid Nation. Honestly, I hate to call any attention to CBS's new show so they can tag it as "controversial" as a way of getting more viewers, but Moonves needs to hear from people about this latest episode, in which a group of children persuade the other kids on the show to chop off chickens' heads as a way of getting protein in their diet. Many of these kids had grown close to the animals during the show, and some were clearly traumatized by the experience.

Please click here to let Les Moonves know that encouraging kids to kill animals is a new low for him (which is saying something), and that he needs drop these lousy stunts right now, no matter how good they may be for his ratings.

The View has been in the news a lot lately, with the addition of Whoopi Goldberg to the show. But yesterday, the show was in the news for a different reason. One of the hosts, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, revealed what she thought was the “funny” news that she has decapitated a chicken. She even demonstrated with hand motions how to do it “correctly,” horrifying the audience and co-hosts Joy Behar and Barbara Walters even more than she usually does.

Here’s a video of the incident.

And here’s what a PETA rep told TMZ about it:

"PETA has two words for Hasselbeck, 'Cluck you!' Next to Barbara and Joy, who expressed compassion, Elisabeth sat there chirping about the joys of killing defenseless birds. Conservatives love animals too, and she ruffled a lot of feathers today. Now that Whoopi has joined the show, maybe it's time for Hasslebeck's head to go on the chopping block."

Anyone familiar with lolcats? This is a take on the phenomenon that my friend Joel made with an image that’s been circulating everywhere on MySpace. Childish? Yes, a little. Joel’s particular brand of genius can manifest itself in odd ways sometimes—but the message is still sound, methinks.

You may remember that we kicked off our KFC Campaign a few years ago after an undercover investigator at a KFC Supplier of the Year in Moorefield, West Virginia, discovered workers throwing live birds against walls, kicking them like soccer balls, and spitting tobacco juice into their eyes. Well, one of our investigators just returned from yet another KFC Supplier of the Year—this one in Butterfield, Missouri, owned by George's, Inc.—where he found exactly the same kind of sadism and workplace "accidents" that amount to nothing short of torture.

This is, quite literally, the best that KFC has to offer: Birds impaled by transport cages, kicked and thrown around by workers, and crushed to death in dumping machines. George’s has been warned that they need to be very careful how they respond to this investigation, as this is a time to address the severe deficiencies that have been exposed in their operation, not to retreat behind a mask of PR and damage control tactics. You can read our letter to the company here. And you can click here to sign our petition asking KFC to just, for God’s sake, stop allowing its suppliers to get away with this cruelty. Here’s our interview with the investigator:

Learn more at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com

A little while back, I wrote about the worldwide competition that the Young Guns ad agency held for people in the advertising industry to make a new PETA PSA. The official winner of that contest was "Your Parents Do It: Don't Block It Out", a brilliant idea put together by the BBDO Agency in Montréal. But over the past few weeks, we've been tallying up votes from our "People's Choice" portion of the contest, and the winner has just been announced. I like that they picked a chicken for this one, because these birds (who aren't even protected by the same inadequate anti-cruelty laws that apply to other farmed animals) have pretty much the roughest deal of any animal on the planet. The ad really speaks volumes, in a darkly humorous sort of way. Check it out—and, if you haven't already, you can see all the runners-up here.

My buddy Pulin, who works on the college campaign for those fast-living trend-junkies over at peta2, was in Panama City last week to try and throw a little bit of social responsibility into the potent mixture of drinking, partying, and boys and girls gone wild that is College Spring Break. You know: Sex, drugs, rock and roll, compassion for animals—all that good stuff. Anyway, a funny thing happened once Pulin and his gang brought out the chicken costume and began passing out leaflets about KFC. A probably well-intentioned but slightly over-eager dude in the crowd (pictured below) decided it would be a good idea to blindside the chicken (actually a University of Florida student named Beth) and tackle her to the ground. Beth was unhurt, but the police officers who witnessed the assault were relatively peeved about the whole thing:

The story has a happy ending though. Pulin and Beth decided that they wouldn't press charges if the tackler, who turned out to be a fairly affable fellow named Dave, would agree to get in the chicken costume himself and spend some time holding a sign to encourage people to stop eating animals. Dave was more than happy to oblige. The story made the front page of the Panama City News Herald, and you can check it out here.

If you caught the new episode of CSI on Thursday, you'll know that the story involved a murder at a "poultry manufacturing plant." Meaning, like, a murder of a human. But there was also plenty of footage used in the show from PETA undercover investigations of chicken slaughterhouses. We're already big CSI fans because of our friend Jorja Fox, but hooray for the number-one show in the world taking some time to let people know exactly what goes on behind the scenes in factory farms.

If you didn't catch that episode, you're probably going to have to wait until this season comes out on DVD. Sorry about that—next time I'll mention this sort of thing before the episode airs.