Renowned author and Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West, whose many influential works include the ground-breaking 1993 book Race Matters, sent a letter to David Novak—CEO of KFC’s parent company, Yum! Brands—asking that KFC adopt the basic animal welfare improvements recommended by PETA and eliminate such practices as scalding chickens to death in defeathering tanks and breeding and drugging birds so that their leg bones break under their own weight.