News

KFC Served What Instead Of Chicken?!

by Caitlin Mahon

One mother in the U.K. got way more than she bargained for when she took her 7-year-old stepson to KFC. As Oliver Hallam bit into a piece of deep-fried chicken, he learned that it was too hard to bite. When he and his mom, Krystal Henderson, inspected it more closely, they learned KFC had served them a deep-fried blue hand towel. Talk about a wake-up call.

Henderson says she went back to the KFC location in Killingworth to complain, only to have the staff inform her that she had to call customer service. Yup, that's exactly what I'd want to hear in the same situation. Henderson says she had to repeatedly call the company to reach anyone. She told The Daily Mail:

I was traumatized by it - I was really upset. ... Realizing it was blue roll was worse than chicken. If it was bad chicken they might have just had a bad batch or something, but the blue roll could have been used for anything - it could have bleach or disinfectant on it. I didn't know where the blue roll had been because it was screwed up. Had someone wiped their hands on it, had it been used to wipe the floor? To give that to a child, I felt so guilty even though it wasn't my fault. For a child to bite into that is horrendous. White he bit into it, it was rock hard. He pulled it out of his mouth and when he did, it pulled away the batter - you could see the blue roll inside.

Oliver couldn't even eat for a week, according to Henderson — can't say I blame him. On the bright side, Oliver didn't get sick from the towel. Henderson did eventually receive a letter from KFC, which read: "The blue tissue has most likely originated from a tissue roll used for KFC hygiene purposes. The store assumes it must have fallen unseen into the breading lug that is under the sieve and was not noticed by the cook."

KFC offered Henderson a free meal for all of the trouble caused... because that totally makes up for this whole situation. A spokesperson for KFC says:

We’re very sorry for Ms. Henderson’s experience and apologized to her immediately ... We take food quality and hygiene very seriously and unfortunately, on this extremely rare occasion, our restaurant failed to meet the high standards that both we and our customers expect. We have retrained staff on our stringent food preparation procedures at this store to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Well, Henderson and Oliver say they're swearing off KFC for life. Yeah. Fair enough.