Fried chicken, snack brand under food safety scanner in Coimbatore

COIMBATORE: Food safety officers have begun collecting samples from KFC outlets and Pepsico's Kurkure following a high court directive ordering the food safety authority to check for the presence of bacteria in their foods. However, authorities say that so far they have not found anything incriminating in the samples. 

Food safety officers collected samples of food products from Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlets on Monday. They also plan to collect samples from Marry Brown and other fried chicken outlets during this week. They will also be picking up samples of Kurkure from retail shops across the city. "We recently received an order to collect samples of all 'YUM' products such as Kurkure, KFC, Heavens Chicken and Marry Brown," said designated food safety officer Dr R Kathiravan. "We do not have Heavens Chicken here, but we will be collecting samples of other brand this week," he added. 

Officials said that this order is based on a high court directive asking the department to check if the food products were "safe". 

"A petitioner named R Devarishi has filed a petition in the Madras High Court bench in Madurai, seeking a direction to the Centre and state government to either cancel or withdraw licenses given to the above products," said an official from the Madurai court. "The petition had also cited reports about bacteria in samples sold by KFC," he said. The petition asked for a preliminary inquiry into the ingredients of the eatables and the outlets to be shut down if the eatables are found to contain bacteria. 

Food safety officers said the KFC samples collected from the city looked clear so far. "They did not contain e-coli or salmonella bacteria," said an officer. Sources said that a couple of these brands used to use colouring for the rice dish they served along with the chicken, but had stopped doing so after being sensitized. "In the recently collected samples, they have been found to be following the food safety act's rules and directives," said the officer. 

KFC had faced some bad publicity last year, when a customer claimed that he found a worm inside his piece of chicken. A case too had been filed against them by the district food safety department. The food regulatory authority has been keeping a close watch on multinationals after the recent ban on Maggi.