KFC Serves up Chicken Leg Special: Lawsuit

June 5th, 2015. By LucyC

How many legs does your chicken have? According to some folks in China, Chinese KFC operators are using chickens with 6 and 8 legs. It’s all part of some weird social media campaign by competitors, presumably, to manipulate customers feelings about the products they’re buying. So, KFC, which operates some 4,600 restaurants (use the term loosely) in China, has filed a lawsuit, as one does.

Of course, rule number one in telling a tall tale and hoping others will buy it is to come with something, well, believable, right? That’s where these folks made their first mistake. If you’re selling a sh*tload of crunchy fried chicken breasts, wings and legs for a living (i.e., as KFC does), would you want more scrawny legs to be more profitable, or breasts? C’mon, you’d be looking to cash in on some GMO breasts. So that was your first clue re: the bogusness of this one.

Regardless, this KFC lawsuit coincides with a government crackdown to clean up rumors on social media spread by Internet marketers, some of which have reportedly been convicted of attempted manipulation of online sentiment—whatever that means. What it translates to is falsifying posts about competitors and in some cases even deleting critical posts. Who knew?

So it’s one big game of chicken….

KFC posted an announcement on its Chinese website, stating that one of the best-known rumors, specifically that chickens used by the company are genetically modified and have six wings and eight legs, is false. Ya think?

The posts are apparently coming from three accounts on the popular mobile phone app WeChat. KFC is looking for 1.5 million yuan ($242,000) and an apology from each of three companies that operated account. Oh yes, and an immediate stop to their infringements. (But look at all this free publicity it’s generating)

The CEO of KC China, Qu Cuirong, said in a statement that it was hard for companies to protect their brands against rumors because of the difficulties in collecting evidence. “But the stepped-up efforts by the government in recent years to purify the online environment, as well as some judicial interpretations, have offered us confidence and weapons,” she told the Associated Press. But seriously—who would believe a chicken could be modified to have 8 legs? Think it through people.

The case has been accepted by Shanghai Xuhui District People’s Court, according to AP. I would love to see discovery on that one.

FYI—the companies being sued were named as Shanxi Weilukuang Technology Company Ltd., Taiyuan Zero Point Technology Company and Yingchenanzhi Success and Culture Communication Ltd. in Shenzhen city.

Authorities launched a renewed campaign 2 years ago to clean up what they called online rumors, negativity and unruliness. Unruliness? On the Internet? Well good luck with that one boys and girls. An eight legged chicken? It defies imagination…but then we do live in interesting times…

This was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2015 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Crazy Sh*t Lawyers See . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.