Blood Shed at the Local KFC
by M. P. Cremer
Photo taken from the vegan protest at KFC in Melbourne, Australia, and screenshotted from the protester’s (@vgan.booty) Instagram.
You’ve had a long day at work: you mixed up the dates on a deadline, your coworker dropped the ball on a team project, and you sat on a giant crumb of chocolate birthday cake. You don’t have the time, energy, or will to cook supper for your family when you get home, so you stop at the always reliable Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
In line at KFC, you decide on the eight-piece meal to feed your family: fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, coleslaw, and biscuits. You check the time on your watch and realize you’ll make it home in time to get in a nice, long shower before supper and for a minute, your day isn’t so bad anymore. Right as you’re savoring the aroma of fried food and debating between a regular Pepsi and a Diet Pepsi, you hear something strange.
Screaming? Someone vomiting? Mechanical issues in the back of the kitchen?
You see a young person walk in, dressed in all white with blood splattered on their clothes.
“Oh my gosh, is she the one screaming?” you think to yourself.
Before you can even move, this person starts pouring red liquid all over the floor. You look around and see this person has an entourage with them: a few people holding signs, one holding a TV screen with chickens being killed on it.
The person continues to pour crimson goo all over the KFC waiting area, and when they turn around you read the back of their shirt and the butt of their pants: Your “food” fought for their life, that should leave a bad taste in your mouth; WATCH DOMINION.
You are disgusted, you are upset, you walk outside, start up your car, and drive to the nearest Burger King where you purchase four Impossible Whoppers.
“I guess it’s Meatless Monday,” you say outloud as you fight traffic on your way home, sighing, and questioning your diet between red lights.
The text above is a dramatic narrative of a video I recently saw where a group of vegans protested in a KFC. I don’t know where or when the video was shot, but I do know it was disturbing (I also know the loudest sound I heard coming from the video was of a cow bellering in an attempt to prove a point in an exclusively chicken place, but I digress).
As a meat eater, I know exactly how I can consume the meat I eat. It’s basic common sense everyone learns, at the latest, in kindergarten. Some consumers may not know all the steps it takes to get from pasture to plate, but the concept is simple: animals die, humans eat them.
Every single person in that KFC knew where their meal was coming from. They knew a chicken had to die for them to — but the anti-ags want to remind us, constantly, of the death process.
It’s honestly not a bad plan on their part. They tug on the heart strings, make people uncomfortable, use the shock factor of it all to brainwash a society who’s been killing for meals since the dawn of time.
But what can we do about it? I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to kill an animal, just like it’s hard for just about every livestock producer out there — but it has to be done.
I can’t help but wonder, “how do we combat stunts like these?”
The simple, do nothing approach tells us to that we must trust the general public to love eating meat more than they hate murder. However, I think there’s more we can do.
For years now I’ve explained to people the reason that ag communicators exist is because the farmers and ranchers out there doing the manual labor to feed the world don’t have time to properly communicate their craft. Think about it: you’ve got 26 hours to get hundreds of acres of corn planted before it rains and when you’re done, you crash…you don’t have time to write captivating stories about the agricultural industry, design a month’s worth of social media graphics, or even set up the perfect golden hour shot of the labor you’re doing.
For a long time, I thought hours of media work had to go into effectively communicating agriculture, and in theory (and for the sake of my job) it does. However, I’ll tell you the most “viral” and impactful work I’ve done has been in the heat of the moment and on the fly.
You know it’s pretty incredible to think that a few minutes of your entire life could impact someone’s opinion of agriculture. By sharing a photo of a newborn calf with a few calving facts, or a video of you harvesting a crop and busting a myth about GMO’s, you could spark something in someone that could shape their mind forever.
Make no mistake, the anti-ags are doing this. I know they are because I see it every single day on social media. All around the globe, everyday there is someone out there dedicating a few moments of their time to the fight AGAINST agriculture. Maybe it’s not as drastic as pouring fake blood on the floor of a KFC, but it’s happening.
I challenge you to — I can’t believe I’m about to say this — post like an anti-ag. Just make one, single, social media post this week about something positive in agriculture. Could be simple, could be complex, could be a photo with no caption. It may seem silly to fight for agriculture behind your computer’s keyboard or your phone’s screen, but I promise you it will pay off.
Fight back, agriculturists, fight back.
