Animal rights group PETA has proposed turning a former KFC restaurant in Fleetwood, Lancashire, into a “Chicken Empathy Museum”. The vacant takeaway on Lord Street is up for auction with a guide price of £100,000. PETA wrote to Landwood Property Auctions asking the owner to consider lending or donating the site for educational use.
Proposal Details
Dawn Carr, PETA’s vice-president of vegan projects, said: “Turning a former KFC into a Chicken Empathy Museum would give this site a new purpose, one that encourages visitors to see chickens as the clever, curious individuals they are. PETA would be delighted to help transform a place once linked to suffering into one that inspires compassion.”
The museum would feature exhibits on chickens’ intelligence, emotions and social behaviour, alongside equipment used in commercial slaughterhouses such as kill cones and shackles. Visitors could meet PETA’s chicken mascot and sample vegan food.
Industry Criticism
PETA used the proposal to highlight concerns about the poultry industry, claiming chickens are often kept in crowded sheds and selectively bred to grow rapidly, leading to health problems before slaughter. Carr added: “Most people know chickens only as ‘nuggets’, ‘wings’, or ‘fillets’, yet these remarkable birds are intelligent, inquisitive individuals with their own unique personalities. They can recognise dozens of other chickens, communicate through a sophisticated range of vocalisations and even perform basic arithmetic. Mother hens talk to their chicks before they hatch and the chicks begin communicating back from inside the egg.”
Neither the property’s owner nor Landwood Property Auctions had publicly responded at the time of writing.
