KFC has confirmed that the alleged "rat" a customer claimed to receive in their chicken order was, in fact, chicken.
The California KFC location in question sent the rat-shaped piece of meat to a DNA lab where it was tested and confirmed to be chicken, clearing the
fast-food chain from the gross allegation, according to Fox News.
“Recently, a customer questioned the quality of a KFC product, and this received considerable publicity given the sensational nature of his claim,” Rodrigo Coronel, a KFC spokesman, told Fox News. He said the restaurant “did an internal investigation and talked to all employees. That statement is false.”
“On Friday, the customer's attorney turned over the product in question for testing at an independent lab, and the results officially confirmed what KFC knew all along — the product was chicken and not a rat as he claimed," the
chicken chain said in a statement, according to ABC News.
The controversy began earlier this month when Devorise Dixon posted a photo to his Facebook account showing a piece of his KFC chicken meal that he claimed was actually “a rat with a tail.”
Dixon’s post received considerable public attention and he received more than 4,200 friend requests
because of the post, according to Business Insider.
Following the incident, Dixon claimed that the manager of the restaurant told him that he had bitten into a rat. He kept the piece of meat in a bag in his freezer and later posted on Facebook to inform his many supporters of the latest happenings:
WENT BACK TO KFC YESTERDAY AND SPOKE TO THE MANAGER SHE SAID IT IS A RAT AND APOLOGIZED, IT'S TIME FOR A LAWYER!!! BESAFE DON'T EAT FAST FOOD !!!
Posted by Devorise Dixon on Friday, June 12, 2015
Dixon refused to speak to KFC either directly or through an attorney, despite the company’s several attempts to contact him. He also refused to turn the chicken tender in question over, Business Insider noted.
KFC rejected Dixon’s allegations from the start.
"Our chicken tenders often vary in size and shape, and we currently have no evidence to support this allegation,” the company said in a statement. The photos “clearly” show a “piece of hand-breaded white meat chicken,” not a rodent, KFC said.
KFC has requested that Dixon “apologize and cease making false claims,” the chain told Fox News.