Vegans Being Set Up for a Fall?

There has been much coverage and comment on PeTA’s latest ‘victory’: they have successfully ‘pushed’ KFC Canada to gas chickens (in about eight years time). PeTA have called off their boycott of the fast food outlet and it appears that some of their members cannot wait to eat at KFC.

There are two aspects to this issue. The first is the gassing of the chickens, which I have looked at recently [1]. Animal rights philosopher Gary Francione [2] also discusses the killing method, ‘controlled atmosphere killing’, and other welfarist initiatives, on Bob Linden’s Go Vegan Radio show. [3] The second is that part of PeTA’s deal with the KFC animal welfarists is the latter offering a vegan item on their main menu, leading to wholly misleading headlines such as “KFC Canada Goes Vegan” [4]. However, it turns out that there is no vegan item to be had – instead there is a vegetarian item that can be made vegan if the customer specifically asks for no ‘mayo’ and the usual bun to be replaced with a wrap.

According to a recent contribution to Vegan Freaks Forum [5], this is what happened when one person tried to obtain the ‘vegan’ option:

So, I told my KFC-loving roommate about this, and being adventurous, he decided to try it. When the lady from KFC took his phone order, she recognized that his request for the 'vegetarian chicken sandwich in a wrap with no mayo' was a request for the 'vegan wrap' (kind of impressive). When his order arrived, the 'wrap' was filled with chopped tomatoes and lettuce, no 'chicken', and included mayo too. He contacted three different KFC customer service people -- one of whom didn't know what was going on, one who said the sandwich is not available in a wrap because 'the patty is round' [PETA says in their email that it is available this way upon request], and one of whom says the vegan sandwich is not available for phone delivery orders. Sigh....

If this is not bad enough, it must be remembered that the organisation that is effectively telling people to put themselves out to obtain a real vegan product is the same organisation that says that animal advocates should not make a fuss about whether food items are 100% vegan or not. Bruce Friedrich,[6] for example, has long argued that vegans should not be ‘purist’ and not concern themselves too much if a little dairy ends up in their food.

The upshot of all this is likely to be the following scenario: PeTA member goes into KFC Canada to support the recent ‘victory’. She asks for the vegetarian option and asks for it to be altered to make it vegan. She then finds herself in the ‘PeTA person dilemma’ (assume she’s with a vegetarian or meat-eating work colleague or there is a queue behind her): does she check there and then whether the item has been properly altered and veganised? Did they replace the bun with the wrap? Did they add the mayo after all? Did they forget the ‘chicken’ ingredient like the example above? If she does not check it out there and then and moves on to her table and then finds that her ‘vegan’ sandwich is not vegan after all, what to do? Return it? Make a fuss? Or does she meekly eat the non-vegan item, as PeTA recommends, for fear of making it look like veganism is difficult?

The evidence suggests that both aspects of PeTA’s KFC ‘victory’ are problematic. Whether at the killing part of the process – or at securing the ‘vegan’ option end as a consumer – this is surely the weirdest ‘animal rights victory’ yet.


[1] http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-controlling-atmosphere-of-chickens.html

[2] http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/

[3] http://www.goveganradio.com/veg/1009/Listen_Online.htm

[4] http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/07/16/kfc-canada-goes-vegan/

[5] http://www.veganfreaks.net/forum/showthread.php?p=620567#post620567

[6] http://www.goveg.com/effectiveAdvocacy_personal.asp