The battle by some environmental groups to eradicate the timber industry continues this week with the news that a North Carolina group called the Dogwood Alliance is taking the unusual step of pressuring Kentucky Fried Chicken to stop using Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) paper products and use Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) products instead.

First off, we should note that while this campaign is comical on the surface, it should be taken seriously. The Dogwood Alliance seems to be focusing on KFCs in the South, but it’s really pressuring Yum! Brands, which owns not just KFC but Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants, among others, for a total of 36,000 restaurants around the world.

The Dogwood Alliance’s Kentucky Fried Forests campaign continues the PR effort by some environmental groups to try to denigrate the SFI standard for sustainable forest products. In fact, SFI is an independent and respected standard that has certified 186 million acres in North America, far more than FSC.

And Dogwood may not even have its facts straight. As this Triple Pundit story points out, the company that KFC uses for its paper products, International Paper, is in fact using FSC products overseas and possibly in the U.S. as well.