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KFC Braamfontein In South Africa Closes After Shocking Images Go Viral

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 00:37 PST, May 10, 2015

KFC Braamfontein has officially closed its doors after shocking images of staff hosing down chicken pieces outside on the concrete floor went viral.

The KFC fast food outlet in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, had to be closed until further notice after the photos of staff washing the chicken pieces on a dirty floor went wild on the social media this week.

It started when a Facebook user posted photos of what appeared to be staff at the KFC Braamfontein removing chicken pieces from containers, laying them on a concrete floor, and then hosing them down with water.

As reported by Times Live, the user, Mfumo Bamuza, apparently received the images from an anonymous Johannesburg resident who took the photos from the balcony of his apartment in Clifton Heights in the Johannesburg suburb.

There were two images showing staff using a hose to spray water over the uncooked chicken. One of the images shows blood and water streaming across the concrete floor. The images posted by Bamuza can be seen in the tweet below.

The Facebook post was apparently shared over 2,000 times, after which KFC South Africa caught on to the problem and sent their own tweet apologizing for the incident.

The company then said how shocked they were to see the images and that at first they couldn’t believe their eyes.

After Doug Smart, managing director for KFC Africa, announced the store was closed, a sign was placed outside the branch saying, “Our store has been closed until further notice, thanks.”

And then the denials started. This was apparently merely chicken intended to be discarded and not for human consumption.

According to Smart, “We’ve confirmed that the product (pictured) was never going to be served. This store had developed the practice of collecting stock that is never going to be sold (but kept) in (the) freezer (and) had to be thawed.”

According to him, the chicken was washed and marked for disposal with a label saying, “On hold. Do not use.”

As reported by IOL, Smart did concede that their normal protocol had been breached.

“(The) bad thing is how they decided to take apart this block of frozen chicken – but it was never going to be sold.

“We have high standards.”

Meanwhile, people have been put off the idea of eating KFC’s fast food with thousands of people hitting the Twittersphere with comments.

Some tweets were a little shocking and quite funny.

Meanwhile, one of KFC’s strongest competitors in South Africa, Nandos Chicken, posted its own message.

Having seen the images, would you go out and buy some KFC chicken today?

And then, of course, there was the story reported on the Inquisitr of the 76-year-old mother said to have been kicked out of a KFC store for breastfeeding her 42-year-old son. Of course, that one turned out to be a hoax.

[Image: KFC Chicken CC BY-SA 2.0 Marufish, insert from Facebook]

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