INVESTIGATIONS: The video of YouTube influencer Niko, paid to visit a farm that supplies KFC with supposedly ‘high welfare’ chickens, went viral in December last year garnering around one million views on Twitter. But as an investigation by VFC has revealed, the claims made by the fast-food giant were anything but genuine.

As we reported back in December last year, YouTube influencer Niko and social media publisher platform JOE were paid off by KFC to produce a video as part of its ‘Behind the Bucket’ campaign. What we witnessed was a supremely cringeworthy attempt to humane-wash the farming practices of KFC’s poultry suppliers, and given that the video has amassed more than one million views across Twitter and various other social media channels, many would have swallowed the lies.

Step in VFC, a vegan fried chicken company on a mission to expose the lies of the animal agriculture industry and offer up a more ethical alternative. Fronted by Matthew Glover - who also co-founded the Veganuary campaign and is managing director of private venture fund specialist Veg Capital - VFC has conducted several notable farm investigations to highlight the stark difference between what the public is told about fast-food production and the grim truth.

Needless to say, VFC has sparked a backlash against KFC and the Niko video by investigating the very same farm featured, operated by meat company Moy Park, one of Europe’s leading poultry producers, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.

In VFC’s response video - an exposé of a farm that, it should be noted, would have been the very best KFC could find - we see Glover talk us through scenes that couldn’t be more contrasting to those originally portrayed by KFC, JOE and Moy Park.

“KFC chose to bring Niko down here when the birds were really small and cute. They were maybe 15 to 20 days old. We've come back when they're 33 days old,” says Glover in the video. “They've got to the point where they can't stand up anymore because their skeletons are so immature. They just can't handle the weight. So they get to a position where they just can't walk anymore. They can't feed.”

VFC also addresses KFC’s attempt to debunk an apparent conspiracy theory that farmers “pump chickens with steroids to make them huge”, a thoughtless attempt at misdirection when, as Glover notes, no serious animal justice advocate ever claims such a thing. The real issue, purposefully avoided by KFC, was the decades of selective breeding that has resulted in a breed of broiler chicken that grows unnaturally quickly, to the extent that their bones can’t support their weight. This leads to lameness, an inability to reach food and water, and painful and prolonged suffering and death.

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“KFC thinks it's acceptable for around four or five per cent of all birds to die in the farm,” says Glover. “This one barn has 52,000 birds, which means that roughly two, two-and-a-half thousand birds are gonna die within 35 days of their life cycle.”

From stocking densities higher than portrayed by KFC, to the bins full of dead birds, VFC’s findings and accusations were backed up by leading experts. Professor Andrew Knight, from the University of Winchester’s Centre for Animal Welfare, upon viewing the footage told the Guardian that “severe crowding and barren environment meant these birds had very little room to move, and to exercise highly motivated natural behaviours, such as foraging and exploring”.

Paul Roger, a vet and founder member of the Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law Veterinary Association, said the birds in VFC’s footage were showing “behavioural signs of stress such as feather pecking and topical skin infection”.

“This is the most disingenuous marketing campaign we have seen for a long time,” Glover added. “This portrayal of chicken farming is utterly misleading and seeks to reassure the public that all is well when nothing could be further from the truth.”

In response to the VFC exposé, both JOE and Niko’s representatives at the Upload agency maintain that what they saw at the time the original video was produced was reported accurately. No one is denying that, but it’s something of a cop-out when they were obviously only given access to a facility in pristine condition, a floor covered in clean straw and not yet caked in excrement, with young birds and not a dead chicken to be found.

Clearly, the Moy Park farm was chosen to represent all KFC suppliers and therefore would have been the very best that they could find. Tony, the “chicken whisperer” - surely a moniker he’ll never live down - not only manages that location, but another in Lincolnshire that according to VFC is one of Moy Park’s Agricultural Academies. In other words, he is supposed to manage farms that set an example for many others. If that’s true, and what VFC found in February was the “best” poultry farming can offer, then what aren’t we seeing elsewhere?

“We might get sued by KFC for this, or Moy Park who run the farm, or even Tony, the chicken whisperer,” said Glover in the video. “But we feel that people want to know where their food comes from, and they deserve to know where their food comes from. And we don't think they want to buy food from places like this.”

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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