The NSPCA has got itself into a cluck over the treatment of chickens on the latest Survivor season airing on SABC3.
Christine Kuch, from the NSPCA, said they felt obliged to take up the issue after receiving complaints from the public over last week’s episode, during which chickens were captured with a net and held upside down. She pointed out that, unlike the contestants, the chickens were on the island against their will.
And that was all before Monday night’s episode.
Contestants on the show wrung the neck of the rooster and then ate it.
“Please note this is Season 20, and it was recorded a while back, so there isn’t anything they can do about it now,” SABC3’s Doulha Domingo had said in response to the NSPCA’s first complaint. She said they had received only one complaint.
But the NSPCA refused to be plucked off the issue so simply. “The excuses made are common, pre-recorded material in a foreign country, and the claims, which we refute, that this cheap entertainment is documentary,” said Kuch.
“Reality TV is not documentary… when you are placing animals in those situations and they can’t escape. Reality means if an animal is suffering, the animal is treated.”
In 2001, the NSPCA took the producers of Big Brother to task over the presence of chickens in the house. The NSPCA’s farm animal unit then removed the chickens.
The Star