KFC’s biggest UK brand campaign has been widely spaffed across the nation’s walls and screens this summer, as the country’s most notorious killer of chickens asks us to… believe in chicken. What does that even mean? And, while we’re at it, what in the name of all that is deep fried is up with that ad?
In a dystopian world, where misinformation is the norm, the laws of physics don’t apply, and no one can be trusted, the people go all Michael-Jackson-Thriller in the streets as they are drawn towards a chicken on a pedestal.
Our first thought was, Have the creatives behind this had a knock to the head? Our second thought was, ‘They’ve only taken a leaf out of the Populist Politics Playbook, where accusing others of the very thing you are doing is an effective deflection tactic that allows you to carry on with business as usual’. In this case, selling more dead chickens and piling up the profits.
And so, while we would rather be spending our day at VFC HQ, posting snarky responses on Insta and dribbling sauce down our fronts, we’re going to have to say something about the flagrant chutzpah of this ad.
KFC’s Misinformation
Is it irony when a company renowned for humane-washing comes up with an ad that commiserates with us over the inauthenticity of the modern world, and assures us we can trust it? Or is it good old-fashioned trolling? If so, well played, you master of misinformation, you got us.
We’ve seen a bucketful of welfare-washing from the Colonel over the years. Remember when they hired a YouTuber to rave about how much fun it is to be a chicken on a KFC farm? And then we popped along to the very same farm to take a look. And do you remember that there were just a few teeny-weeny differences between the KFC ad and reality?
It could be argued… and yes, we are going to argue it… that the dystopian world conjured up in the ad — the world in which we can no longer trust what we are being told — exists precisely because companies like KFC push propaganda at us all day long.
Essentially their ad is saying: You know how we have duped you so much in the past that you cannot trust anything at all about the food you eat? Only we can be trusted now to put that right. I mean, how very Trumpian.
Meat Industry Misinformation
KFC is but one player in the wider Misinformation Machine that is the global meat industry. And it fires on all fronts because the damage it does is so widespread and so immense. Farming animals for people to eat is a leading cause of deforestation, habitat destruction, wildlife loss, species extinction, freshwater use, soil degradation, land use, and water and air pollution. (Just ask the people who live near the River Wye how much they believe in chicken.) And then, there’s that little old thing it also drives called climate breakdown.
On top of all that, the industry farms and slaughters as many animals a year as the number of people who have ever lived. These are not products but sentient beings, like the dogs we adore and the cats who use us for their own ends (and whom we also adore). The lives of chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, and sheep are as important to them as ours are to us. We know that and we as a nation love animals, and yet the Machine works tirelessly to keep us buying their bodies despite our compassion and despite our desire to live on a healthy planet.
How does it do it?!
The multi-trillion-dollar meat industry has taken a leaf out of the Big Oil Playbook, which, of course, had read cover-to-cover the Tobacco Industry Playbook. These are a set of proven actions that allow destructive industries to kick the can of regulation down the road while ensuring people keep buying the products that they actually do not support. These tactics include denying science, sowing doubt, buying or bribing political support, denigrating the solutions and those who promote them, and, of course, providing false reassurances through marketing and even flat-out lying to us. Their profits trump everything, even our future on this planet.
And yet, And yet…
Like many other power- and / or profit-driven entities and individuals, the company’s misdemeanours are hidden in plain sight. By so clearly displaying the misinformation era it has helped to create, KFC’s Believe in Chicken campaign becomes less biting social commentary and more an admission of culpability, perhaps even guilt.
Look again at the subtext of the ad, and you’ll see the masses hooked on cheap fast food, and worshiping at an altar of misinformation that it believes to be the truth. As the old saying goes, it is easier to dupe someone than to convince them they have been duped, and KFC is leaning so far in, it is in danger of toppling over. Our aim is to give it that shove.
The Cure For Misinformation Is Honesty
In its ad campaign, KFC urges us to trust nothing but KFC and in so doing, it paints itself as The Ministry of Truth. Of course we don’t hurt animals! Of course we don’t pollute rivers! Reject the evidence of your eyes and ears!. Trust us! Still channelling George Orwell, we feel compelled to counter with this: “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
So, let’s start the revolution with these cold, hard facts.
- More than 70 billion chickens are farmed and slaughtered every year so people can eat them. This is more than all other land animals combined.
- Chickens are bred to grow far too big far too quickly, which puts a huge strain on their hearts, lungs, and skeletal systems.
- The UK slaughters 20 million chickens every week.
- With a 4% mortality rate, that means 800,000 birds suffer to death on British farms every week.
- In the UK, more than 96% of chickens are factory-farmed. In the US, the figure is 99%.
- Inside crowded, filthy industrial warehouses, each bird is afforded less space than an A4 piece of paper. They have no access to fresh air or grass.
- Chicken farms are a leading source of water pollution, killing rivers and decimating wildlife.
- The chicken farming industry uses more soy than any other sector, making it a leading driver of deforestation.
- Chicken meat creates more than three times as many climate-damaging emissions per kilogram as tofu, and more than all plant-based foods, except coffee and chocolate.
- Chickens are intelligent, inquisitive, courageous animals, who have a real zest for life and embrace all that it can offer… if only they are given the chance.
Chicken the Meat = Chicken the Bird
So, returning to the ad, which keeps drawing us back like addictive ultra-processed fast food after a drunken night out.
Is it weird that a company that is responsible for slaughtering gazillions of chickens creates a visual where chicken-eaters gather around to worship a single bird who has been placed on a pedestal?
No need to answer that because, of course, it is. But then we are in the era of doublethink, where we can love animals and hate factory farming while simultaneously harming them by financially supporting it.
The industry has done sterling work disassociating the final product from the life it once was. So now, even as KFC shows us the victim of its practices, it assures us that she is loved and worshipped in a way that reminds us of other human-related abuses of power and the gaslighting that inevitably accompanies them. Nonetheless, in so doing, many people are reassured: chicken the meat is not chicken the animal.
And so, it came as no surprise that when we asked the public what the word ‘chicken’ made them think of, very few thought of the actual birds. Despite chickens being sentient, playful, smart, and social creatures, by adulthood, almost all people have fallen under the meat marketers’ spell.
Despite the gaslighting, manipulation, false assurances, and lies, there is still hope. When asked about chickens and pigs, most children do not judge animals to be appropriate food sources. Most 6- and 7-year-olds classified chickens, cows, and pigs as not OK to eat. Compassion and a sense of justice come naturally to kids.
Unfortunately, children are duped twice over, first by the industry and often also by their parents. Kids may not think chickens should be killed and eaten, but they do not know that they are. When asked about nuggets and bacon, almost 40% of children think they come from plants.
Believe in Better
The flesh of a chicken is the plainest, blandest of meats, which makes it incredibly easy to imitate, and that means it is incredibly easy for people to switch to plant-based versions. Given that there are some amazing vegan chick*n substitutes that provide all the taste and experience we crave, there is no need to involve animals or destroy the environment. We know you may be cynical about these claims because Big Ag has worked to make us all cynical, but it’s true. Plant-based nuggets recently came out on top in what is believed to be the world’s largest blind taste test.
While KFC and its industry buds seek to eradicate compassion, gaslight us with false assurances, deny the science, pollute our rivers, and heat up the climate, they count their mountain of cash. Their profiteering is supported by governments that continue to green-light chicken farm expansion despite the environmental devastation they cause and prop it up with meat subsidies. Heck, even the world’s oldest animal welfare charity, the RSPCA, continues to turn a blind eye to industrial cruelty to chickens.
It’s clear you cannot believe KFC or the chicken farming industry. You also cannot believe Big Ag or the governments who defend and support intensive farming when they should be leading the charge to bring the industry down.
But that does not mean you cannot believe anyone. At VFC, we believe in a better food system where animals are not harmed and our planet – and all its wild places and inhabitants – is protected. We believe that breeding animals just to kill them goes against our innate compassion, and we believe that everyone can enjoy delicious fried food without the sacrifice.
In short, we believe in eating chick*n and loving chickens.
