Official Kentucky Fried Chicken, Inadequate compensation

last updated 8 January 2015

Vegetarian activists are protesting a plan to make Kentucky Fried Chicken the official picnic food of Kentucky. Kentucky state Rep. Charles Siler says he’s simply trying to honor the late Col. Harland Sanders, whose signature blend of herbs and spices made Kentucky world-famous for tasty chicken. But Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says that honoring fried chicken implicitly endorses animal cruelty, and that while they’re at it, lawmakers may as well “change Kentucky’s state bird from the cardinal to the debeaked, crippled, scalded, diseased, dead chicken.”

A Wisconsin man who spent a year in jail after being wrongly convicted of child molestation has been awarded only $5,000 in compensation. David Sanders, 61, was freed when the real culprit confessed, but only after Sanders had spent $18,240 on legal fees. A 1979 state statute caps compensation for wrongful imprisonment at $5,000. Sanders’ attorney, Byron Lichstein, said his client, while grateful he’s no longer in jail, thinks the statute “should be updated.”