Undeterred by the thorough trouncing he received last time he threw down the gauntlet, the Colonel has placed it gingerly at my feet once more, with another apocryphal advertisement that premiered during — what else? — the Super Bowl.

I know that times are tough, and every business has a right — perhaps even a duty — to make itself at least appear to be the frugal choice. I get that; I really do. Even my own restaurant has cut prices, introduced lower-cost fare, and offered bargains for repeat business. We’re all in this together, and we all want our respective businesses to survive the turmoil.

The ad is not so bad for what it says, as much as for what it does not say (and understandably never would). For those who cannot bear to watch, let me offer a synopsis: It’s morning in the parking lot of the scrupulously manicured KFC, and a 55-foot tractor-trailer awaits the opening cook’s arrival as the voice-over announces, “KFC’s original-recipe whole chicken is delivered fresh.” The pavement is wet after a spring rain, and the place is lit up because the sun has yet to fully rise, all while a guitar gently picks a tame bluegrass rendition in the background.

Thanks to the magic of pause technology, one can actually read the fine print that KFC’s lawyers made them place at the bottom of the screen that otherwise lasts about four seconds. It says, “Fresh claim applicable to KFC’s drumsticks, thighs, wings, and breasts. Not applicable in Alaska, Hawaii, and due to supply outages” (my emphasis). The not-applicable-due-to-supply-outages part could just as easily read, “This is true, except when it’s not.” But let us take the nice lady in the ad at her word, and assume that all the cut-up chicken on the Tyson truck outside is indeed fresh. By “fresh” she is referring to chickens that were raised in CAFOs in tens-of-thousands, beaks removed so they can’t peck each other to death due to stress, then slaughtered in meat processing plants where 1 in 3 of the often-undocumented workers is injured to the point of hospitalization every year. The waste from the CAFOs and processing plants are among the biggest contributors to climate change-related pollution.

Full Story: http://www.grist.org/advice/chef/2009/02/05/?source=food