Why Called KFC, Not Kentucky Fried Chicken Anymore?
Posted by Chan Kelwin in Interesting Findings, tags: abuse, chicken, food, kfc, urban legendWhy the “It’s finger lickin’ good” restaurant no longer called Kentucky Fried Chicken but referred to only as KFC? Is there something wrong with the food (eg. chicken) that KFC is serving to its customers?
I have had a few conversations in the past on why KFC no longer use the name Kentucky Fried Chicken. Honestly, I never thought that there was anything fishy about it. To me, it was nothing more than a fast food chain rebranding itself. However, not everyone I spoke to shared the same sentiment.
“They can no longer use the name Kentucky Fried Chicken because the chicken they serve isn’t real chicken! I heard that the chickens they breed are genetically modified so that they do not have feathers on them. This will then save them time because they do not need to pluck them off their body.”
I have never read of stories where chickens were genetically modified to be featherless before. Therefore, I only took what I heard as a rumour. However, if people can clone a sheep and genetically modify a durian so that it does not stink, the featherless chicken claim sounds possible.
On top of that, I saw this video on YouTube starring Pamela Anderson that claimed that chickens served by KFC were abused during the breeding process. The video showed how the chickens were stepped on, thrown onto the wall and even kicked like a football by the workers in the slaughter house. Not a pretty sight to say the least.
However, I wasn’t just going to accept this hearsay as a fact without first doing some research myself. A quick search on Google revealed otherwise.
KFC Mutant Chickens
KFC — Urban Legends
You see, Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranding itself to KFC really has nothing to do with how their chickens look like pre-cooked. Firstly, the fast food chain was trying to get rid of an unhealthy image due to the word fried. Secondly, it wanted to lose deemphasize on the word chicken because they wanted to open up their menu to offer a more varied menu.
This is true, no? When you talk of KFC, chicken comes to mind. When you talk of McDonald’s, you have burger and fries.
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Ola nuffnanger
I don’t think the claims were entirely untrue. After all, PETA’s cry to boycott KFC in Canada worked to the point where KFC publically announced to clean up their act in hope to re-attract customers who have taken up the fight against the so-called “Kentucky Friend Cruelty”
I don’t think KFC will simply make a public apology/statement if indeed the claims were completely false.
Indeed, the stories about the featherles chicken is an urban legend. That chicken actually came about as a rather stupid attempt by a university professor, having spent all his grant money and unable to produce a ‘healthy chicken’ , in an attempt to fool the press.
The pictures of the featherless chicken that was distributed in the media was, therefore, merely a regular chicken which had it’s feathers plucked off. If you look closely you can see that it still has some feathers around its legs
Once again, the claims of the featherless chickens are not linked at all with PETA.
However, the other forms of abuse, such as inumane slaughtering and horrible living conditions that were featured in the PETA video is sadly true.
I’m sure that they used rather graphic footage, and instances of chicken-footballs are thankfully rare, but that does not deny the fact that the chickens are pumped with growth hormones, live in horrible conditions, and even have their beaks chopped off.
It’s not exclusive to KFC chicken really, you only have to step into any major (and by major I mean machine operated, internationally recognised) chicken farm to see that they practice such acts as well. It’s the “economical” thing I suppose.
@Cyren
The thing is that I am not too worried what is happening to other KFC outlets in other countries. Although it’s possible that these big gun fast food chains will do their best to lower their expenses and increase production/profit, I doubt such sadist acts exists in Malaysia. Of course, we can’t be sure on that point. However, if you think about it, many fast food/restaurants serve food that may be bad to our health but we still go back to them time after time again. How ironic.
That is one scary fact you had there
A friend told me that the name change was because there are more than selling chickens now. It is also selling kebabs, breakfast, porridge etc
i think it’s more of a corporate re-branding, shortening the name and also to expand their menu. they do have the nasi-lemak-in-a-wrap for breakfast now
Yeah, they do have a more variety now. I haven’t tried the nasi lemak wrap one though. Maybe one day, before they discontinue it.
Well if this is true about “KFC” then “KFC” will be loosing a lot of customers. So far every time we brought “KFC” some pieces were not cooked properly. Some pieces had broken bones which puts me off “KFC”. Further more lets not talk about the crap service. You know that the customer is always right!
They were sued by muslims