KFC- ETHICAL AND UNETHICAL ISSUE:

Introduction:

The word ethics is derived from the Latin language where it denotes a moral philosophy. In the
English language, ethics is the study of values and customs governing a given social group.
Ethics requires a differentiation between wrong and right, acknowledgment of responsibility and
knowing what is good or evil. Ethical norms assist human beings in the process of judging
rightful acts. Consequently, the concept can be applied in the practices and policies used by large
organisations. (Walton, 1992)

The company chosen for analysis is Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food restaurants. The
company’s headquarters are found at Kentucky in the US. Additionally, it is one of the most well
known restaurant chains in the world especially with reference to chicken. It boasts of over
eleven thousand restaurants located in over eighty countries of the world. Examples here include,
UK, China, Thailand, Kuwait, Spain and Barbados, Puerto Rico, Pakistan and many more. The
company’s major product is chicken. These are served in various forms such a Chunky chicken
hot pie, chicken fillets, chicken sandwiches among others. On top of these, the company also
serves a variety of burgers and other non-chicken related foods. In total, there are three hundred
products that the company offers the public. KFC is part of a global restaurant system known as
Yum! This is the reason why the company normally teams up with other restaurants under the
Yum! brand like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.

Ethics at KFC

Constructive aspects of ethics at KFC

Kentucky Fried Chicken is very keen about ethical standards both within and without the
company as asserted by their company representatives. For instance the company is strict about
is vendor engagements. Before a supplier can secure a contract with Kentucky Fried Chicken,
they have to comply to similar ethical standards as KFC. This means that the supplier must not
utilise under age labour to producer their commodities, they must pay fair wages and must also
avoid placing harmful chemicals in their commodities. These concepts have governed the way
KFC chooses other business partners too; they include contractors and manufacturers. By doing,
this, the company is protecting human rights. (Montgomery, 2003)

The company also looks out for the health and safety of their workers. Since KFC is a fast food
chain, then its workers are very busy, the company’s representatives affirm that they are always
trying to protect their respective employees from detrimental hazards in the workplace. In line
with this, KFC always ensures that their employees work for them voluntarily. This means that
the company detests forced labour.  They also believe in according their employees justice in
case of any eventuality. Their disciplinary measures have always been fair and few employees
complain about how their administration handles such unusual occurrences. It is a known fact
that some employees in the corporate world utilise mental punishment as a way of repressing
their employees and keep them subservient. However, this is not the case with KFC as no cases
have been reported in the media.

Kentucky Fried Chicken employment practices are also ethical. This is due to the fact that the
company does not discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, gender, disability or any
other factor. The company’s recruitment practices largely focus on the capabilities of the
potential candidate rather than on their respective race, cultural backgrounds etc. In line with
these practices, the company usually offers overtime for employees who decide to work beyond
the normal working hours. Besides that, the company has created shift arrangements so that it
can avoid overworking employees at any given time. (Bowie & Beauchamp, 1983)

The issue of wages is also top on KFC’s list. The company believes that workers should be paid
according to their efforts. Consequently, there is an element of fairness when it comes to the way
the company treats its employees. The company depicts this attitude in some of its restaurant
outlets such as the ones here in the UK and also in Canada. The company has exceeded
minimum wage by close to eight pounds per hour. Also, in the Canadian outlets, the company
pays most of workers a favourable amount and has even allowed for unionisation of employees.
All the latter deeds go to show that KFC is committed to providing its employees with good
working conditions.

Despite the positive moves made by KFC Canada, with regard to chicken products, the company
has still been grappling with controversial issues owing to their vegan burger. The company
faced a lot of opposition from animal rights activists who were trying to protect the rights of
chickens. Consequently, those activists suggested that KFC should provide non-chicken
alternatives in their diets. KFC responded to these law suits by creating a vegan burger made of
eggs. However, many consumers still complain about the ingredients in the burger and they also
assert that there are problems with the way the company prepares the burger. According to some
consumers, the vegan burger still has eggs and some dairy products which are still made from
animals. Additionally, other people complain about the way the company places the ingredients
of the vegan burger in a grill that was used to cook meat. (Montgomery, 2003)

However, it can be argued that the latter consumers have lost the point; the purpose of
introducing the vegan burger was not to provide an alternative with no animal products, but it
was to save the lives of the chickens that were being killed to create their meals. Consequently
when the vegan burger contains some eggs, then it is still okay because there is no chicken there.
Besides this, the issue of cooking its ingredients in the same grill as chicken has also generated a
lot of controversy for nothing. This is because using the same grill does not in any way affect the
taste or the contents of the vegan burger. As a matter of fact, the arguments made by these
consumers would have been valid if the products were cooked in animal grease. Since the
cooking oil is not made from animal grease, then it does not contaminate the chicken. The
arguments made by such consumers could simply be a case of too much emphasis on detail.

Controversial aspects about KFC’s activities

KFC ethical activities have been put to the test when some animal rights activist challenged
KFC’ treatment of chicken. In the month of June 2008, the People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) together with Hollywood actress Pamela Anderson sent written complains to
the KFC managing Director in the UK for unethical treatment of chicken. According to this
group, Kentucky Fried Chicken is not keen on the way their suppliers treat their chicken in their
farms. The group asserted that these suppliers make the chicken grow too fast thus preventing
them from walking. (AOL, 2008)

The latter activists also asserted that KFC’S suppliers normally mistreat chicken in the slaughter
houses. They claim that the chicken are chained by metal shackles and placed in electric water
baths. These groups also complained about the way chicken are still alive during the process of
de-necking them. They believed that chicken’s living and dying conditions should be improved.
These assertions were further justified by the latter group when they claimed that KFC Canada
followed suit by changing some of their policies. According to the animal rights activists, the
Canadian chain opted to consider how chickens were bred before purchasing them from
suppliers. They even offered vegetarian alternatives for their respective clientele. Consequently,
the celebrity Pamela Anderson- who was speaking on behalf of PETA asserted that she would
stop consuming KFC ‘s products until they complies with their suggestions.

Another closely linked media report was with regard to reports made by undercover reporters
working for PETA. The latter reporters had made video cameras of the way KFC treats its
animals. Some of them were quite disturbing as they depict chickens being thrown against walls,
being beaten and being slaughtered mercilessly. The latter group also claimed that KFC 
suppliers overcrowd their chickens and make the lives of those respective animals very
miserable. Some of these suppliers also engage in beak trimming; which is the process of cutting
off chicken’s beaks. In response to these allegations, KFC company asserted that they had
formed a committee to tackle the issue of animal rights. However, this committee was not
collaborating with any of the animal rights movements. Besides that, the company was also
quick to reply that some of their suppliers who engage in beak trimming were only doing what
normal chicken farmers are doing too. Additionally, the company claimed that their suppliers
were not mistreating their animals either. (Howell, 2000)

However, ethical experts would agree that KFC has breached its own ethical policies. The
company believes that all their suppliers should not engage in any sort of malpractice.
Nonetheless, according to UK law, beak trimming is allowed for only thirty percent of the bird
population in order to stop them from hurting one another using their beaks. It is very clear that
KFC ‘s suppliers have breached this law as they trim almost all their chicken. Besides that, the
suppliers have also exceeded the maximum allowable bird density for chickens as stipulated by
the Department for Environment. They recommend a maximum of thirty chickens per meter
squared. Again, these are all laws that have been ignored by KFC suppliers. In addition, the
twelve thousand demonstrations that have been conducted against KFC’s suppliers also indicate
that the company is going about the issue in an unethical manner. KFC’s other outlets should
follow the example made by KFC Canada who only contract suppliers using controlled
atmosphere killing. The outlet also looks out for the welfare of chicken in their respective farms.
(AOL, 2008)

KFC has faced a lot of moral discord for their wage conditions. The latter is a characteristic that
is synonymous with most fast food restaurants within the country and the rest of the world. The
company has been accused of employing a substantial number of young employees who receive
above minimum wage. Although the company pays its employees slightly above minimum
wages, the company’s huge profits are not reflected in the incentives offered to its employees. As
if this is not enough, a substantial number of KFC employees have not been unionised. This
gives the company undue advantage because they have the capacity to change what employees
earn without getting any resentment from them. These poor employment practices have been
concentrated in some particular outlets such as New Zealand and Canada. In New Zealand, the
Company offered different rates for youths compared to the rest of the employee base. This
caused a strike in the year 2003 after which the company agreed to reduce their levels of
employee treatment. In this regard, they asserted that they would eliminate those youth rates but
they never did. (The New Zealand Herald, 2005)

After examining these issues, one can assert that KFC have demonstrated unethical behaviour in
some selected outlets. The company even expects its suppliers to have good working conditions
but they have not managed to clean up their house in all their outlets around the world. (Cragg,
2002)

KFC has also been in the news for their poor environmental policies. According to some
activists, KFC has not demonstrated good corporate responsibility because of the type of
suppliers who provide them with soy. Soy is part of their chicken ingredients; a company known
as Cargill supplies it. According to the environmental activists, most of this soy is sourced in an
illegal manner according to large number of the reporters. Some of these claims were as a result
of investigations made by the environmental group Green peace organisation. In response to
these allegations, KFC asserted that they source their soy from Brazil and not from the illegal
operations of Cargill. However, the environmentalists still insists that that is not the case, their
soy comes from the Amazon forest and KFC is demonstrating that they are not committed
towards creating sustainable environment. There is no way of knowing for sure whether these
accusations are true, however, one cannot ignore the fact that the environmental group did their
own investigations and found that there were some problems with the illegal logging. (Brazil
Magazine, 2006)

KFC has also been accused of utilising the founder’s names for a substantial number of their
commodities even when the founder did not approve those commodities. KFC’s founder was
known as Sanders and he is one of the individuals who came up with a unique recipe for creating
KFC’ chicken. At that time, the founder was in charge of only a small portion of the restaurant
chain. However, with time, the company began expanding and he lost ownership to other groups.
The new owners have been using Sanders’ name in most of their commodities even when their
recipes were not created by the latter individual. It is therefore necessary for the group to come
up with honest advertisements and assertions about who was the true chef behind some of their
commodities. Otherwise, this is misleading advertising and marketing. They are not adhering to
the ethical rules of marketing.

Conclusion:

As a restaurant operating under the fast food industry, there are some ethical issues that come
into play when considering the nature of the industry itself. This is especially since the Health
Ministry in the region announced a battle against obesity. Also, KFC also has to deal with
different ethical issues in their capacity as a business corporation. Any company worth its salt
should have a code of ethics and must be prepared to stick by it KKC has breached a substantial
number of their ethics codes. However, one must not assume that the ethical issues facing KFC
are one sided. Most times, individuals tend to focus on the negative aspects of ethics and fail to
look at things from another angle. The purpose of the essay was to provide an in-depth analysis
of the fast food industry through two contrary ideas; the moral and legal obligations that KFC
has adhered to and also the ethical misgivings that the company has engaged in too.
 ICFAI UNIVERSITY, DEHRADUN

NAME: MYTHILI.A

ENRLNO: 09BS0001341

SUBJECT: BUSINESS ETHICS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

COURSE CODE: SLGM602

TOPIC: ETHICAL AND UNETHICAL ISSUES IN KFC

DATE: 17-11-2010

FACULTY NAME: APARNA.H

STUDENT SIGNATURE FACULTY SIGNATURE