What if Someone Went Looking for Your Nuggets?

Carl Karcher opened the first Carl’s Jr. restaurant in Anaheim in the 1940s. In the cutthroat fast-food business, the company has faced various dilemmas over the years. Who could forget the corporate bloodletting over whether to add burritos several years ago?

But I venture to say it’s never been accused of demeaning a chicken.

Until now.

A Virginia-based group says the company’s new TV ad does just that. I’d say Carl’s Jr. hotly disputes the charge, except that it basically laughs it off.

I’m always interested in other people’s point of view, so I phoned Karen Davis to ask why her group thinks the ad “portrays chickens in a degrading and demeaning manner.”

It was either that or dismiss her as a kook.

I start way behind her, in that I didn’t know it was possible to demean a chicken. I condemn cruelty and improper care of them, but I hadn’t considered putting them in show business as part of that.

The ad first aired about 10 days ago. It shows a group of men in suits standing around as one turns a live chicken every which way in a futile search for nuggets. They note that the chicken has wings, a breast and thighs, but no nuggets. The ad is meant to spoof competitors who sell chicken nuggets.

The ad’s punch line shows a man removing a rubber glove and saying, “It’s not there, either.”

The question before the house: Did the ad demean the chicken?

Davis heads United Poultry Concerns, a group dedicated to “promoting the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.”

Some of you probably consider that a punch line in itself. I made the mistake once in print of vaguely suggesting that, and it landed me on the group’s mailing list for the last year or so. I’ve learned the group takes on matters large and small when it comes to ducks, geese or chickens.

The TV ad is not a small one, Davis insists. “When someone’s poking around your body and sniffing around, looking under your tail, wing and treating this bird’s body derisively . . . that’s our objection. There’s more to abuse and harm than sticking a knife in somebody.”

In other words, the bird would feel bad being used in such a way?

Yes, Davis says. She cites “The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken,” a book by Dr. Lesley Rogers, whom Davis describes as a “chicken physiologist and ethologist.” In the book, Rogers concludes that chickens have cognitive capabilities equal to mammals, Davis says.

“It’s not only that they understand pain and suffering, but that they have the mental capacity to experience what is being done to them,” Davis says.

The bright lights of filming, the numerous takes likely needed to produce the spot and the absence of a “significant other” to calm the chicken would combine to make the experience stressful for the chicken, Davis says.

In essence, Davis says we wouldn’t subject a dog or cat to that, so why do it to a chicken? She wants Carl’s Jr. to pull the ad and for people to protest in writing.

Larry Brayman, a spokesman in St. Louis for CKE Restaurants Inc., the company still bearing Karcher’s initials, says he has a hard time taking the complaint seriously.

“Our position is that this is strictly a humorous commercial spot to try to resonate with customers that there’s no such thing as a chicken nugget,” Brayman says. He faxed me a statement from the American Humane Assn. in which it concluded that “no animal was harmed in the making of this commercial.”

The dispute, however, lies in Davis’ claim that the chickens have feelings that likely were hurt. “We have no quantifiable information that proves that chickens do or do not have feelings,” Brayman says.

We can’t settle that here, but I asked Davis whether she considers her group way out of the mainstream.

“Do I feel like miles away from the mainstream? Probably,” she says. “But we’re not as far as we were 10 years ago. In the past 12 years, since I started UPC, and without any illusions or rose-colored glasses on, I have seen a major change in attitudes of people, certainly the more educated people who are amenable to ideas and information.”

I want to be in that camp, so I’ll meekly conclude by stashing a bunch of jokes I had in mind.

That doesn’t mean I think chickens have feelings or that Carl’s Jr. did anything wrong.

I’ll merely use as my exit line Davis’ response about what her members say when they ponder whether their view will ever prevail:

“Not in our lifetime, but sometime.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.