When I lived in the Louisville area, there were several things I thought the city could've used—like more vegan restaurants or a more extensive public transportation system. But you know what Louisville—home to the headquarters of KFC—really needs? The city is sorely in need of our chicken statue, designed by award-winning children's book author and cartoonist for The New Yorker Harry Bliss.

We're asking Louisville's Department of Public Works to allow us to install the statue in downtown Louisville for three months, starting July 15. We hope that it will draw attention to the millions of chickens who are killed each year for KFC—chickens who live out their short lives in ammonia-ridden sheds locked in cages in which there's not even room to take a single step in any direction. At the slaughterhouse, their throats are cut while they are still conscious, and they are often scalded alive.

We submitted our permit request this morning—hopefully Louisville's downtown area will have an artsy new addition in just a couple of weeks!

Posted by Amanda Schinke

We've been busy countering KFC's offers to fill potholes in various cities across the country with our own proposal to pay double to fill them ourselves. We're excited to announce that at least one mayor is seriously considering our offer.

Mayor Michael O'Brien of Warren, Ohio, is currently thinking about allowing us to fix his city's potholes, but he wants to run it by KFC before making a final decision. Hmm, is he trying to start a bidding war?

As a nonprofit, we might not be able compete with dollars against a money-hungry company that can't even spare a few cents out of each bucket of chicken bits that it sells to improve conditions for the very animals it profits from. That's why we've offered to "sweeten the pot," so to speak, with a free vegetarian meal for the road crew—on any day that Mayor O'Brien chooses.

If he agrees to this, the mayor won't just be doing right by 1 billion chickens; he'll show that he's invested in the health of his city's employees and the well-being of his city's environment. I can't think of a better ending to "Meat's Not Green" Week than that.

Posted by Shawna Flavell

Campaigners from PETA and our affiliates have been working their tails off, fearlessly campaigning against McDonald's, protesting KFC, and pumping up the case against bad zoos. Take a look:

The San Antonio Zoo sold giraffes to Michael Jackson and now refuses to help them. Our giraffe friend just wanted you to know that.

Nugget sharpens his knife for a little payback.

"Wait, what do ya mean it's supposed to be his throat?"

Our skeletal friends at PETA Germany would rather be dead than eat KFC.

Inspired yet?

Posted by Shawna Flavell

PETA Foundation staffer Alex Bury and Vegan Outreach pres Jack Norris' recent wedding was for the birds—and they wouldn't have had it any other way. You see, the Bay Area couple are so committed to spreading the vegan message (she proposed to him while they were handing out veg leaflets) that they flew to Canada and shared their commitment to each other at a Toronto KFC restaurant.

Why get hitched at a Canadian KFC? Marriage isn’t the only thing new and exciting on the menu. Thanks to PETA’s landmark agreement with the company that coordinates the purchase of chickens for all KFC franchises in Canada, conditions for chickens killed for KFCs in Canada are now subject to various welfare improvements and most KFCs in Canada have added a faux-chicken sandwich to their menus. Making their vegan wedding a joyous occasion for all peeps (geddit?) involved, the newlyweds served the new sandwich at their reception. What did guests think of the faux fowl? It was love at first bite. Speaking of love ... congrats, Alex and Jack! Here are pics of the happy event:

Chili Pepper Productions

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

Whatever PETA does in the U.S., our counterparts in Germany always feel like they have to do it better. A month or so ago, we were patting ourselves on the backs after a protest where we burned Colonel Sanders in effigy was picked up by national media. Well, in Dusseldorf today, PETA Deutschland—who apparently felt that the demonstration just wasn't exciting enough for the discriminating German audience—decided they needed to spice it up by bringing along a firebreather in a chicken suit. If by some odd chance you get Germany's main television station, RTL TV, you should be glued to your set tonight for the exclusive footage. The whole thing is kind of incredible.

On second thoughts, I’d probably get into a lot of trouble for posting the pics from our actual Halloween party. But here are some from yesterday’s demonstration against KFC. We pulled out all the stops for this one and brought along ...

a skeleton to scare KFC into making some animal welfare improvements …
a pumpkin to tug at their grizzled old heartstrings …



… and some other people. Including a dude in a Darth Vader mask.

More pics after the jump.

In the course of negotiations with a company like KFC—which refuses to make even minimal improvements in the lives of the billions of chickens it uses for profit—there is a time for subtlety and there’s a time for burning their corporate logo in effigy. This past week turned out to be of the latter sort. Check out the pic below from our awesome protest in Washington:

In related Colonel Sanders effigy news, I just discovered that PETA isn’t the only organization that has a longstanding KFC boycott. According to those omniscient folks over at Wikipedia, a Japanese baseball team called the Hanshin Tigers has failed to win a championship in more than 18 years due to what fans call “The Curse of the Colonel.” Apparently their run of bad luck started when a crowd of Tigers fans threw a Colonel Sanders statue into the river as part of a celebration.

So in case you’ve been looking for some more reasons to join PETA’s KFC boycott—in addition to the fact that KFC kills millions of chickens a year by boiling them to death—you can do it so that the much-maligned Hanshin Tigers can finally win the championship that has been stolen from them by a company that has nothing but contempt for animals, consumers, and Japanese baseball.