Is KFC ethical?
Our research highlights several ethical issues with KFC and its owner YUM! Brands, including very poor animal welfare practices, a weak approach to workers’ rights and increasing climate impacts.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and KFC’s overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
Worst rating for animal welfare
KFC's owner YUM! Brands has a Global Animal Welfare Policy, but its criteria are largely weak.
For example, it stated: "All birds have access to periods of light, dark, suitable ventilation, a nutritionally balanced diet and unrestricted clean water." It did not state whether chickens were allowed to go outside.
In a questionnaire response in 2025, KFC told Ethical Consumer that “70% [of chickens] have access to daylight” – suggesting that 30% still did not.
YUM! Brands also used caged eggs. While it had a target to transition to cage-free eggs, this had not been achieved (6% of its eggs were from caged hens according to its 2024 Global Citizenship & Sustainability Report).
KFC owner has subsidiaries in Israel
KFC owner YUM! Brands also owns two subsidiaries in Israel, Tictuk Technologies Ltd and Dragontail Systems Ltd, according to its 2024 US corporate filings.
Subsidiaries like these result in the flow of tax contributions to the Israeli government, at a time when Israel has been condemned worldwide for its genocide of the Palestinian people.
The company therefore lost marks in Ethical Consumer’s Israel-Palestine rating.
Increasing carbon emissions
Ethical Consumer also rated KFC owner YUM! Brands on its approach to climate change.
The company published a Global Citizenship & Sustainability Report in 2024 and responded to a questionnaire sent by Ethical Consumer. However, neither of these adequately addressed the company group’s main climate impacts. For example, the company did not discuss steps to reduce the impacts from its widespread use of animal products, such as meat and dairy, which account for more than 14% of all emissions worldwide.
In October 2024, the website CSO Futures published an article titled ‘Yum! Brands’ ‘unstoppable growth’ strategy is hindering its climate performance’. The article stated: "KFC and Pizza Hut owner Yum! Brands saw its overall carbon footprint increase by nearly 7% between 2022 and 2023 as its ‘unstoppable growth’ strategy led to the opening [of] 3,300 new restaurants."
The company therefore scored poorly in Ethical Consumer’s climate rating overall.
Weak approach to workers’ rights
KFC and its owner YUM! Brands are major employers worldwide, and have many workers in their supply chains.
However, YUM! Brands’ policies have only weak protections for supply chain workers’ rights. The company expects suppliers to comply “with all applicable wage and hour laws and regulations”, meaning that they are not expected to provide a living wage, or limit working hours to a safe number each week. While YUM! Brands prohibits child labour, it again only refers to local laws, some of which allow children to work from 12 years old.
YUM! Brands did not appear to have published a list of its suppliers - a crucial step to allow workers, civil society organisations and journalists to hold it to account for issues in its supply chain.
It also did not appear to have taken significant steps to ensure good purchasing practices. For example, to avoid aggressive price negotiation, inaccurate forecasting, late orders, short lead times and last minute changes. Poor purchasing practices are a major cause of workers’ rights abuses, because they squeeze suppliers pushing them to cut corners on everything from wages to health and safety.
KFC and YUM! Brands therefore scored poorly overall.
Poor score for tax avoidance
YUM! Brands and KFC also scored poorly for its approach to tax avoidance.
The company owns multiple subsidiaries in tax havens such as Switzerland, Malta and the Netherlands, including companies that are high risk for tax avoidance.
YUM! Brands has published a Tax and Trade Policy, which stated: “We work to maintain tax policies at the international, federal, state and local levels that foster competitiveness, efficiency and a balanced level of taxation for the corporation.” It did not prohibit use of tax avoidance schemes and provided no explanation for its subsidiaries in tax havens.
The text above was written in June 2026, and most research was conducted in December 2025.
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