Crying fowl: KFC and the World Food Programme

You are the World Food Programme (WFP), the food aid arm of the United Nations and the biggest humanitarian organisation working on hunger worldwide. In your mission to tackle world hunger, you work to enable local populations to achieve greater food security and support sustainable solutions to help the approximately 1 billion people around the globe whose access to food remains at risk. How do you go about fulfilling this mission? You team up with fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).

A subsidiary of parent Yum! (the world’s largest restaurant company and owner of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell), KFC seems a curious partner for the WFP. Fast food companies know little about providing nutritious, sensibly portioned products for their customers, as evidenced by a recent KFC incarnation dubbed the ‘Double Down’, ‘a bacon-and-cheese sandwich that features two pieces of fried chicken in place of the traditional bun … described by nutritionists as an affront to human health’.[1] What’s more, these companies have consistently demonstrated that they only make their products ‘healthier’ following market pressure and demands from food activists and nutritional authorities; such changes do not emerge organically. Fast food companies are also thought to eradicate countries’ culinary diversity, routinely undercutting local companies, suppliers and producers as part of an assault on national cuisines.

When it comes to access to food, a further serious point is the structure and logistical conditions behind fast food production, which are essentially anathema to working towards food sovereignty, food security and the right to food. The fast food model depends on encouraging the mass-production of a highly restricted range of crop, poultry and livestock varieties as part of a monoculture oriented towards the demands of predominantly Western consumer markets. This is in direct contrast to the ingenuity and crop biodiversity that has historically characterised farmers’ capacity to produce food worldwide. Indeed, tackling world hunger demands the exact opposite: Working towards sustainable access to food; recognising local expertise; promoting biodiversity; and putting people before profits. In short, what does KFC know about tackling world hunger?

CORPORATISING FAMINE

The specific details of the collaboration between KFC and the WFP are a bit hazy, but their relationship is essentially an exercise in raising money – principally in the form of financial donations and staff working hours through charitable activities – to fund food rations (in countries including Somalia, India, Rwanda, Colombia and Ethiopia).[2] As part of KFC’s ‘World Hunger Relief Week’ (‘the world’s largest private sector hunger relief effort, spanning 110 countries, 36,000 restaurants and over one million employees’),[3] a further aim is to ‘raise awareness’ of the issue of world hunger ‘and mobilise staff, franchisees and customers to help do something about it’.[4]

While the upsurge of goodwill around tackling hunger is a great example of people’s desire to improve our world (Yum!’s companies apparently raised a total of US$20 million in overall donations in 2009, with activities involving some 4 million volunteer hours),[5] the main thing being fed is KFC’s public relations (PR). It’s not clear whether these donations are always channelled through the WFP or to whom the company is ultimately accountable; details for example of KFC UK’s contributory funding of £365,000 to ‘a school food project in Africa’ are thin on the ground.[6] And while ‘raising awareness’ is on the face of it a positive aspect, you have to question the legitimacy of the source of information and the company’s ultimate ability to communicate the complex historical constellation of politics, climatic conditions and policy which determines people’s access to food worldwide.

In honour of the efforts behind World Hunger Relief, WFP executive director Josette Sheeran has been fulsome in her gratitude to the company: ‘WFP knows how to reach those most in need and will do what it takes to get a cup of food to any kid in the world … But without funding, we can’t reach these kids. It takes just 25 cents to fill a cup with food. The World Hunger Relief campaign helps fill the cup for tens of thousands of kids – and we’re so grateful for it.’[7]

While it is of course of the utmost importance that people around the world facing critically shortages of food supply are assisted and that the primary international institution charged with doing this is fully funded, the very premise that a fast food corporation would be able to bask in reflected glory leaves a bitter aftertaste. In the struggle to create sustainable food systems worldwide, the hyper-capitalist, unrelenting drive to lower supply margins no matter the side effects is part of the problem, not the solution. The notion that KFC can enhance its corporate image and profit through an association with the alleviation of hunger is deeply distasteful, but this, it goes without saying, is precisely its intention.

A BUMPER CORPORATE-IMAGE HARVEST

What does KFC get out of this association? Well, a simplistic feeding-the-world narrative does the company’s image and CSR (corporate social responsibility) a world of good among well-intentioned Western consumers. As the Genuine Kentucky blog puts it, 'This warms the heart, feeds the spirit, and makes you want to make haste to your nearest KFC.'[8] For fast food companies keen to rebuild the sector’s declining image among consumers, such words, even from a blatantly pro-KFC source, are music to the ears. Indeed, for a corporation formerly accused of negligence around suppliers’ treatment of poultry[9] and alleged purchasing of illegally exported, environmentally destructive Brazilian soy from US commodities giant Cargill,[10] the WFP charm offensive plays a central role in the drive to restore public credibility.

In the name of continuing this corporate-image harvest, a more sinister outcome is KFC’s capacity push this drive to the point of undermining the credibility of the very UN institutions it purports to support. Witness KFC CEO Roger Eaton’s efforts to convince UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the need to recognise the ‘Grilled Nation’ – KFC’s claim for international acknowledgement as a state – among UN member states:

‘As Secretary-General, you have pledged to build a “stronger United Nations for a better world.” We at KFC are confident that recognizing Grilled Nation will strengthen your organization and satisfy the stomachs of your many Member States.’[11]

This absurd UN time-wasting is of course a mere publicity stunt designed to achieve brand exposure. But the focus of such efforts further underlines, if it were even necessary to do so, that KFC is far more concerned with enhancing its own image than working towards sustainable solutions to world hunger, and is quite prepared to trivialise the issue of hunger in the process. As illustrated in an October 2007 press release, parent company Yum! will even go to the extent of claiming responsibility for saving lives: ‘With funds raised, the company hopes to save hundreds of thousands of people from starvation.’[12] You would think that if the company sincerely had that much faith in the WFP’s work and was that concerned with saving lives, it would donate all of its net profits to the programme each year.

FEEDING PEOPLE, NOT PROFITS

As a subsidiary of the United Nations, ostensibly the world’s leading external force working for equality, peace and justice, the World Food Programme should concentrate its efforts on working to promote and protect grassroots and domestic food producers and defend agricultural biodiversity, not team up with dubious, self-interested corporate forces. To do otherwise perpetuates an implicit discrediting of African and other Southern peoples’ historical ability to feed themselves and a tradition – of ingenuity and adaptability rather than of doing the same thing – of responding to changing climatic and environmental conditions with skill and intelligence.[13] It also neglects engaging in serious analysis of the problems surrounding food sovereignty in the global South.

In a time of an acute food crisis and pervasive food insecurity for much of the world’s population, the immediate and future challenges will remain to work towards food sovereignty. This is to be achieved through investment in agriculture (owned and organised to cater for the needs of people, rather than big business);[14] redressing the problems of speculative food-commodity trading; cushioning small- and medium-holder producers from low-cost, subsidised imports; and creating more secure returns on production. In some respects, if the UN – theoretically the international, external body with the greatest legitimacy and clout to defend people’s interests – is ill-positioned to halt the corporatisation of this space, why is anybody else going to be strong enough to do so?

Nonetheless, when it comes to advocacy and exploring the politics behind the right to food, we should look to the vibrant mobilisation of international farmer and peasant organisations like La Via Campesina and [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/12/to-the-brainstormery-my-friends/#more-124290
[2] http://www.wfp.org/how-to-help/companies/donors
[3] http://www.genuinekentucky.com/the-colonel-cares-about-more-than-just-chicken/
[4] http://www.kfc.co.uk/charity/
[5] http://www.kfc.co.uk/charity/
[6] http://www.kfc.co.uk/charity/
[7] http://www.wfp.org/content/yum-brands-kfc-pizza-hut-taco-bell-launch-world-hunger-relief-effort-raise-awareness-volunteerism-an
[8] http://www.genuinekentucky.com/the-colonel-cares-about-more-than-just-chicken/
[9] http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/kfc021605.cfm
[10] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/kfc-exposed-for-trashing-the-a/
[11] http://media.kval.com/documents/UN+Letter+--+FINAL.pdf
[12] http://www.yum.com/news/pressreleases/100907.asp
[13] Mamadou Goïta, 'Souveraineté alimentaire en Afrique de l’Ouest : la résistance des peuples contre les agression', Pambazuka News, 28 June 2010, http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/65563
[14] Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel (2009) http://monthlyreview.org/090720bryceson.php