Most of us are familiar with the urban legend that has plagued KFC over the years about the chicken with six wings 9 legs, no feathers, no beak and enormous breasts, so genetically modified that they can hardly walk. The variations on this theme are seemingly endless.
This so-called Frankenchicken started as a random email simply titled, Boycott KFC.
Some of the emails claim that these findings were a result of a study conducted by the University of New Hampshire. Under those circumstances, why wouldn't you believe it? The university reacted by publishing a rebuttal on its website. Colette Janson-Sand, Associate Professor of Nutrition at the University of New Hampshire, said that her department fielded a flock of phone calls about the "chicken that isn't chicken" rumour – a few of which she described as "hysterical."
Besides the fact that these genetic modifications are beyond the scope of modern science, if you start to question the claims in the email, you'll begin to see how preposterous it really is. The email claims that KFC is not really chicken at all but a "genetically manipulated organism" that is so unlike a chicken that the government has forbidden KFC to use chicken in their name – hence the name change from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC in 1991.
The reality is that KFC – like any other chicken restaurant in Canada – does not raise its own chickens. Farmers do – not mad scientists, but farmers. And those farmers raise normal sized, two legged, two winged, fully beaked, no hormone added, fully feathered chickens.
And KFC changed its name because in 1990, the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the United States was so debt-ridden that it decided to trademark the name ‘Kentucky’, so that anyone using the word in a name would have to pay licensing fees. KFC refused, as did a number of other companies, like the Kentucky Derby.
Nobody knows why these rumours start and why they hold true for so long. Maybe they serve the purpose of keeping consumers on their toes and making sure we do our job properly, by raising healthy chickens in good conditions.
Sources:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp http://www.snopes.com/lost/kfc.asp
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/fooddrink/a/kfc_chicken.htm
