While obese people are suing fast-food chains, another attack is underway concerning the welfare of the animals consumed at fast-food chains, namely chickens. McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's have conceded to the organization named PETA, (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The aforementioned corporations made adjustments with their suppliers by requiring that chickens have more room to roam and egg laying hens have access to more water. These efforts increase my utility while eating a chicken sandwich because I know the quality of the meat is higher, but PETA's recent global attack is too altruistic.

PETA advocates that chickens have feelings and should not be slaughtered in the fashion they are now. According to Gilbert Schwartz and his colleagues, the lead organizer of the Minneapolis based PETA protest against KFC, chickens have feelings. PETA places chickens on the same hierarchical level as dogs and cats. They advocate it is inhumane to slit a chicken's throat while it is still alive. The organization does not offer an alternative solution to make the chicken's demise more pleasurable.

Organizers claim chickens have feelings but no where in their literature do they establish that chickens or any other animals are bearers of rights. Chickens are near copies of digital pets in the way of intelligence and feelings, but humans do not protect the rights of machines. The animal rights movement gives non-right bearers rights thus blurring the distinction between sentient beings and non-sentient beings. This ideology is a form of "rights inflation" that is based solely upon the contention that chickens may have feelings.

Chickens are a hop, skip and a jump away from turkeys in the way anatomical features and a rational being should presume they have an analogous thought process. Turkeys are so belligerent that when they look upwards during a rain shower they are capable of drowning themselves. Why should we exert an enormous effort towards assigning rights to a being which lacks emotion and any standard level of intelligence?

The Minneapolis based protest against KFC took place near the intersection of Lake and Chicago Street in Minneapolis. Before entering the KFC we were bombarded with flyers stating why PETA was there. Nowhere in this literature did they establish that chickens bear rights. Rather, its major claim was that chickens have "feelings" and therefore should not be slaughtered in an inhumane manner. We did not let PETA's flyers stand between us and the entrance to the KFC.

Upon walking through the door, a police officer there to control the crowd turned to us and said, "no one is gonna keep these people from their chicken." We agreed, no one, not even PETA and their assertion that chicken's have "feelings" was gonna keep us from our chicken either.