Diners at a branch of KFC were targeted by a vegan protestor who urged them to stop eating meat. Tarion Partridge played a video which reportedly showed chickens in a gas chamber.
She went into the restaurant in the centre of Leicester carrying a screen that she said was playing images of conditions inside chicken farms. Tarion, 24, also approached diners and spoke to them about how the process of producing the meat they were eating was cruel.
But her tactics received a cold welcome from staff and customers, reports LeicestershireLive. Tarion wasn't fazed by the reaction, or the fact that staff told her not to film inside the restaurant, despite being met with laughs by some customers.
After a few minutes she left the store and continued to campaign outside, reportedly having a more cordial discussion with two young people. Posting on YouTube, Tarion reveals that she was met with some hostility, saying that the restaurant "smells like death".
Some people told her they wanted to be left in peace and didn't want to see the footage. One man is heard telling here that "I'm eating my chicken".
However, she remained determined to make her point and is later seen meeting a woman who is the daughter of a chicken farmer. The woman says she believes there is little she can do to help out the chicks, but Tarion believes otherwise. “You could stop eating it,” she suggests.
“You think that you think there’s nothing you could do but there is because if you stop eating it, you stop buying them it will stop them farming chickens.”
In response, the woman, who appeared understanding of the vegan cause, took exception with Tarion’s approach. She asks: “So you’re quite happy to force your opinion on other people?”
The activist’s video next sees her speaking to two men eating a KFC, with Tarion asking them: "Do you like dogs? Do you have a dog? Do you like your dog? Would you like it if your dog was taken to a slaughterhouse, body chopped up into pieces? No-one would eat dogs, why?” she asks them.
“Because it’s weird,” she is told. She replies: "It’s weird because you’ve been conditioned to think it’s weird. You know a chicken’s only four weeks old when they’re murdered. “Still tasty though,” replies one of the men.
As the exchanges continue, the video, which was posted on her YouTube channel at the end of May and has been viewed more than 8,000 times, shows members of staff approach her. “We don’t want our customers to see that,” one is seen telling her.
Speaking to LeicestershireLive, after the visit, Tarion, whose channel has more than 2,000 subscribers, said the threat of police being called did not put her off her stride. She said: “When they asked me to leave, I just thought that people were being denied the right to see this footage.
"Yes it's uncomfortable and shocking, but it needs to be seen. If the police did arrive I’d have tried to make them go vegan too.
“More people are waking up and seeing the truth which is great, but more people need to see what’s happening out there. I won’t give up doing what I’m doing.
"It’s so easy to go vegan these days. It’s 2022, there are so many alternatives out there - you don’t need to eat chicken or any other meat.
“They get treated in shocking conditions and it’s wrong. I’m doing what’s right and maybe I’ll return to Leicester to see if more people have woken up to the cause.
“I was nervous, I’ll admit that as it was the very first thing of its kind that I’d done in public. But I went into KFC to show the truth, the cause mattered most. I was doing it for the chicks.”
