KFC Has Won a Lawsuit Against Claims It Breeds 'Mutant Chickens'

As unbelievable as it may sound to legions of gullible Facebook users, it turns out that some of the shocking images of animal treatment which pop up on their feeds may be inaccurate, out of context, or, in some cases, completely made up.

Last year, photos began to emerge on social media alleging that KFC's meat supply was darker than we ever could have imagined: colonies of genetically-modified six-winged, eight-legged mutant chickens. As wild as these claims were, they gained so much online traction that they forced KFC to get litigious, for fear of irreparable damage to their brand.

This week, Xuhui District People's Court in Shanghai took a stand against social media "shock photos" and ruled that three local marketing companies "damaged KFC's reputation" and "caused it economic losses" by posting images of the grotesque, but quite obviously fake, birds, according to Reuters.

The three tech companies in question—Yingchenanzhi Success and Culture Communication, Taiyuan Zero Point Technology, and Shanxi Weilukuang Technology—were forced to apologize to Yum Brands Inc., which owns KFC, and fined a combined 600,000 yuan ($91,191) in damages, which is considerably less than the 1.5 million yuan ($227,977) that Yum Brands was asking for.

Ironically, some of the photos being used to corroborate the mutant chicken hoax were apparently made by a skeptical photoshopper who claimed to be trying to prove how easy it was to make fake pictures.

KFC filed the lawsuit in June of last year after the hoax images were uploaded to Chinese social media app WeChat. China is KFC's single biggest market with over 4,600 locations nationwide and, on average, a new franchise opening every day.

"We brought suit against these individuals for making false statements about the qulity of our food and we are pleased with the outcome," Yum spokeswoman Cindy Wei told Reuters.

The fried-chicken giant has been fighting hard to protect its brand and combat perceptions of food safety issues, and this judgement came just days after ten executives from Yum supplier OSI Group were handed stiff jail sentences for selling expired products from returned or canceled orders to save money.