KFC: Hoax Or We Do Chicken Raw? Nasty Pic Looks Like Salmonella To Go

September 18th, 2012. By AbiK

It’s bad enough when mango or cantaloupe recalls are on just about every salmonella email alert. But this photo of a KFC chicken sandwich allegedly served up raw in Ontario is quite another thing, and it’s pretty nasty.

Now, we do not have confirmation that this did, indeed, happen—the image originally posted on Reddit user boneriffic12‘s page a few days ago. And it’s making the internet rounds having been picked up by HuffPo and Q13 Fox out of Seattle. The pic was posted with this message:

“Fried Chicken #FAIL. My friend ordered a chicken burger from KFC & it came back raw. Yes he ate that bite that’s missing.”

So hoax or horror, you be the judge for now.

What it does bring to mind, however, is the recent case of the little Australian girl who had allegedly suffered brain damage as a result of salmonella poisoning stemming from a KFC chicken wrap sandwich she had eaten. The girl, Monika Samaan was just 7 years old when she ate a chicken wrap purchased at a KFC in Australia in 2005. She was hospitalized in serious condition and spent months in a coma. The judge ruled in favor of the victim, awarding her 8 million Australian dollars.

KFC has said it will appeal the judge’s decision.

And, in the midst of all this, just last week WFAA-TV (Dallas/Fort Worth) published an investigation they did regarding reports of spoiled chicken meat—the reports were coming from KFC employees, not patrons. Apparently, some of the KFC workers had noticed a “stench” coming from the walk-in cooler which housed the raw chicken meat. According to the workers, KFC has a policy that raw meat must be used within 10 days of being killed; however, workers claimed that some meat was still being cooked—and served—after sitting for up to 16 days.

The Conroe KFC is a franchise owned by Tem-Kil, Inc. Both Tem-Kil and KFC declined to speak on-camera with WFAA’s I-Team, but both, no surprise, expressed their commitment to high food safety standards. KFC also shut down the Conroe outlet for a week to investigate the charges and to provide additional food safety training to workers there.

Since the reopening of the Conroe KFC, health inspectors have visited the restaurant and did not find any food safety violations.

UPDATE: (9/18/12) We received this email from Doug Hernandez—the guy who holding the chicken in the picture above. Here’s what he had to say:

The KFC chicken sandwich that you posted on your site is actually my picture, and it is a real picture unfortunately. I did not think that it was going to get this much attention until my friend Greg mentioned that he had posted it on reddit.com.

The incident actually happened on August 31st, I originally filled out the feedback form on KFC’s website, but did not get a call or email. I posted the picture on the KFC Canada Facebook page, and got a response from them asking that I call the 1-800 number. I did and they filed a report and said they would be in touch with me. I have not heard back from them yet, that was on September 4th. I hope they will be getting back to me soon. That’s all I have on this so far for an update.

Guess we’ll see what happens…

 

 

Tags: Australia, Conroe TX, Food Poisoning, KFC, KFC Lawsuit, Monika Samaan, Raw Chicken, Salmonella, Tem-Kil Inc

This was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 at 8:55 am and is filed under Food Illness . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.