News

STATEMENT FROM KFC REGARDING SAMAAN COURT CASE

July 2010

There has recently been some publicity about a Sydney family who is seeking $10 million damages from KFC after claiming a chicken Twister caused their 11-year-old daughter to contract salmonella poisoning which led to permanent serious injury in October 2005.

KFC is confident that the evidence to be presented in court will show the claims are unfounded but, while awaiting the court’s decision, we want our customers to have the following important facts.

Firstly, KFC shares the deep sympathy felt for Monika Samaan and her family given the health ordeal they are enduring but we believe our company was in no way responsible for causing this tragedy.

“While we are deeply sympathetic to the Samaan family, we are defending this case because it is clear to us the evidence does not support the very serious claims being made,” said Albert Baladi, KFC Australia’s Managing Director.

Mr Baladi said those facts included:

  • Sales data from the Sydney store where Mr Samaan claims to have purchased the Twister shows no record of that alleged purchase at the time he claims to have made it.
  • An investigation was carried out by NSW food authorities which concluded there was no evidence of any link between that particular KFC store and Monika’s illness.
  • Testing conducted on samples from the batch of raw chicken supplied to KFC in October 2005 found no evidence of the strain of salmonella alleged to have caused Monika’s illness.
  • KFC’s electronically-controlled cooking systems are specially designed to cook chicken safely at temperatures in excess of 160C. Salmonella cannot survive at these high temperatures.
  • KFC serves 2 million customers every week in over 580 stores across Australia. Never before have we had an incident like this in 50 years of operation.

KFC is proud of the high quality food we have been delivering to our millions of customers across Australia for more than half a century and will take all necessary steps to ensure that proud history is maintained.

Media Contact: Dan Blyde (Ph: 0400 001915)