Smelly chicken served to customers, manipulated expiry dates, dirty fridges and moldy meat. We’re not talking about a street market in some remote corner of the world, but about KFC restaurants in Europe. A double scandal that has engulfed the most famous fast food chain in the world for fried chicken first in Denmark, then in the Czech Republic, and which now raises a more than legitimate question: what happens in the 150 restaurants located in Italy?
But let’s first understand what happened in Denmark and the Czech Republic.
The first bomb exploded in June 2025, when the Danish TV program Kontant aired an investigation that made anyone who had ever set foot in KFC shudder. According to testimonies collected, restaurant employees served thawed chicken that had already expired, but before doing so they printed new labels to update the dates and cover their tracks. And it was a systematic practice, not an isolated episode.
The authorities then decided to look into it clearly. The Danish Veterinary and Food Authority carried out inspections of all 11 KFC restaurants in the country, and the result was truly shocking: none, zero out of eleven, achieved an acceptable hygiene score. Inspectors found meat stored in hot and dirty refrigerators, food not labeled properly and, in some cases, covered in mold. KFC had to permanently close all its Danish restaurants while waiting to find a new franchise operator. A total debacle.
Three months pass and in September 2025 the second case breaks out, this time in the Czech Republic. An independent journalist documents the exact same practices: spoiled meat, falsified expiry dates, chicken served to customers even though it was obviously “smelly”. Former employees detail how expired meat was relabelled, washed and even resold after months of storage.
The Czech State Agricultural and Food Inspection Authority conducted more than 140 inspections of KFC restaurants during 2025, finding violations at around one in three locations. KFC denied everything, predictably. But the story of alleged expiry date manipulation took on a political dimension when a Czech MEP submitted a question to the European Commission, asking what concrete measures they intend to take to ensure that KFC restaurants comply with EU food safety standards in all member states.
And in Italy? Being Animals wants answers
It is in this context thatessereanimali has decided to raise its voice and ask KFC Italia for what every consumer should demand: proof. Documentary evidence that the same practices discovered in Denmark and the Czech Republic do not occur in the 150 restaurants present in our country. The association has already written to the company, asking for maximum transparency.
The request is neither capricious nor alarmist. It is the logical response to a scandal that affected two European countries in the same way, as if it were a shared method rather than random episodes. In Italy, 70% of KFC customers eat inside the restaurant, a very high percentage compared to the Anglo-Saxon average of 15-20%, and the main target is young people between 16 and 38 years old, with a new push towards families. In short, a large and varied public that has every right to know what it is eating.
To accompany the request to KFC Italia, È Animali released a video today that takes up and reverses the chain’s famous advertising claim. The message is sharp: from KFC “you really know how to get dirty“A play on words that condenses years of complaints, investigations and institutional silences into a few seconds.
The scandal of falsified dates is part of an already very worrying picture in terms of quality and animal welfare. A few weeks ago the new report The Pecking Order was published, which every year evaluates the main fast food chains based on the standards imposed in their supply chains. For KFC Italia the rating is once again “poor”, with no improvement compared to 2024.
But it gets worse: from 2022 to 2023 KFC Italia even reduced the use of better chicken breeds, going from 7.21% to 0.9%. A choice that has led to an increase in mortality on farms and a greater use of antibiotics. Not exactly the direction one would expect from a company with a turnover of 179 million euros and the ambition of exceeding 200 points of sale by 2027.
The undercover investigations conducted byessereanimali in the farms of a KFC supplier in the province of Verona had already shown, in March 2024, images that were difficult to forget: thousands of chickens crammed into overcrowded sheds, animals with chests and legs burned by contact with litter soaked in ammonia, animals that grew up so quickly, genetically selected to do so, that they couldn’t even stand up. Chickens which, let’s remember, end up on the plates of Italian restaurants.
Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this whole story is KFC Italia’s behavior when faced with requests for dialogue. For almost three years, È Animali has been seeking discussions with the company to push it to join the European Chicken Commitment, a set of minimum standards on animal welfare already signed by over 300 European companies and adopted by KFC itself in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In Italy, however, the wall is total.
Seven hundred emails sent, 600 comments on social media, thousands of posts and tweets, and more than 50,000 signatures collected by a public petition (you can still sign it HERE). KFC Italia responded with silence. In the meantime it has launched NOggets, advertised as a superior quality product, “not the usual minced chicken nuggets”. A brilliant slogan behind which, according toessereanimali, hides the same supply chain as always.
With a turnover of 179 million euros and the aim of exceeding 200 points of sale by 2027, KFC Italia can and must do more – declares Simone Montuschi, President ofessere animali – More than 50 thousand people have signed our petition and KFC Italia cannot ignore them.
It’s hard to blame him. In light of what emerged in Denmark and the Czech Republic, the company’s silence is no longer just a question of animal welfare but a question of public health and basic respect for consumers. And that answer – so far denied – becomes more urgent and necessary with each passing day.
