Michelle Obama Urged to Take Meat "Unfit for KFC" Out of School Lunch

TreeHugger / By Sami Grover

The poultry industry has been using their influence to peddle this meat to the national school lunch program.

Michelle Obama may have won the hearts of locavores everywhere with her expansion of the White House organic garden, her campaign against obesity, and even bringing bees into the White House garden. But campaigners are asking her to do more. Specifically calling for her to step up and demand that chicken meat from spent hens—meat that fast food chains like KFC reject as substandard—be removed from school lunches nationwide.

Campaigners at New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) are calling on the First Lady to speak out about the use of low-grade chicken meat in school lunches—meat that would otherwise be used for compost, pet food, or perhaps chicken-fat biodiesel:

"Since 2007, kids have been served 13.6 million pounds of chicken in school lunches that's so low-quality it would otherwise have become compost or dog food. This is chicken KFC refuses to serve.

Known as "spent hen" meat, the poultry industry has been using their influence to peddle this meat to the national school lunch program."

Besides animal cruelty issues, the campaign also claims that the high level of medication used in layer hens, along with increased instances of salmonella (up to 4 times the norm!) make spent hen-meat a health risk for school children nationwide.

Check out the NJPIRG site and send a letter to the First Lady asking her to take action.

Sami Grover is Director of Sustainability at The Change, a company offering brand strategy and design for good-for-the-world businesses and non-profits.