KFC sued for doin’ Chicken half-right

September 29th, 2009. By AbiK

Kentucky Fried Chicken (which hopped on board the acronym branding bandwagon to be hip in the hood a few yeas back and so now is known as KFC) is the target of a lawsuit filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in California.

The issue, which has been in the courts for several years now with several fast food chains including Burger King and McDonald’s, centers on the presence of PhIP—a chemical byproduct of cooking meats at high temperatures.

According to a report on SFGate.com, PhIP was added to California’s list of carcinogens in 1994—and as such, it falls under California’s Proposition 65 which requires a business to warn customers if they are being exposed to a substance that can cause cancer or birth defects.

And that’s what’s at the heart of the current lawsuit against KFC—the warning, or lack thereof.

Lest you think that the PCRM is some small, CA-based enclave of lotus-pose-lovin’ quacks (I say that as a yoga practitioner so back off), it’s actually based out of Washington, DC and claims 7,000 physician members (SFGate.com). They’re also the group that puts out the School Lunch Report Cards that have helped put focus on and raise the nutritional bar for what our kids are eating at school. And, ok, they do promote eating a vegetarian diet.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this one. For starters, while PhIP has been identified as a carcinogen, the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) study & evaluation on PhIP indicates that there is “inadequate evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of PhIP”—BUT there IS “sufficient evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of PhIP”. So basically, PhIP was found to be carcinogenic in mice and rats, not humans.

Additionally, a study done by D. Tang, C.H. Book, and C. Neslund-Dudas (Race-Specific Determinants of PhIP-DNA Adducts in Prostate Cancer Carcinogenesis, 2006) indicated that indeed there was a correlation between PhIP dietary exposure and prostate cancer—however, the linkage was found to be more prevalent with regard to consumption of grilled red meats.

Another aspect to this is that the California state attorney general’s office did its own study on PhIP levels and concluded that the PhIP levels in the cooked chicken were not high enough to require a warning under Proposition 65. While that study isn’t binding on this lawsuit, suffice to say it’s fodder for KFC to cite in defense of itself.

Finally, in terms of a precedent, SFGate.com also mentioned that in the case involving McDonald’s, the company won a ruling from a Los Angeles judge who dismissed the case. In Burger King’s case, they agreed to warn customers of the presence of PhIP—though a quick browse over at the Burger King website yielded zip in terms of any warnings that I could see.

I’m all for transparency and I do think companies should apprise customers of potential dangers they may otherwise be unaware of. But I also liken this to smoking—if you don’t know by now that fast food is not exactly the healthiest food option, well…you know where I’m going with this one.

Tags: KFC, PhIP

This was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 10:39 am and is filed under Emerging Issues, Personal Injury . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.