PETA Dishes Up "Unhappy Meals"

The average American child eats five hamburgers a week, but most kids would probably lose their lunch if they knew about the animal suffering that goes into making McDonald's "Happy Meals." That's why PETA is kicking off a national "Unhappy Meals" tour to tell kids that eating Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets isn't all about getting free toys. PETA will distribute its new "Unhappy Meals"-colorfully illustrated boxes describing how chickens are forced to live their entire lives crammed five to a cage the size of a desk drawer and how pigs live in spaces so small that they can't even turn around-to kids at schools and at McDonald's restaurant playgrounds.

McDonald's has taken some small steps to alleviate conditions for cows and pigs in slaughterhouses, but conditions on factory farms, particularly for chickens and pigs, are unimaginably cruel. According to the late California Congressman George E. Brown, a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, to keep production lines moving, slaughterhouse workers "often find themselves resorting to unbelievable brutality," including "strangling, beating, scalding, skinning, and dismembering fully conscious animals."

It's the animals who deserve a break today, and kids can give them one by recognizing that Ronald McDonald isn't a clown, he's a murderer.