This is certainly not success story

10:30am Monday 2nd June 2008

SIR - Why on earth is the Worcester News publicising the opening of a new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant' in the city (KFC to open in city after online group's campaign', May 24) with a lengthy, celebratory article, six entire months before the store is even due to open?

Your dedicated reporter found no space to mention that KFC is widely criticised for its brazen mistreatment of animals in mass factory farms where chickens are restrained, drugged and painfully killed. Let alone that the oil-soaked carcasses of force-fed chickens are barely fit for human consumption.

This isn't a success story about some new amenity arriving in the city, for goodness sake. The only success here is that of an industrial-scale catering strategy based on the addictive qualities of heavily-salted, battered food, combined with a chummy corporate image. A strategy which the Worcester News has obviously fallen for - hook, line and bargain bucket.

Bob Churchill, Worcester