For years, no matter where I lived, there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken fast-food restaurant nearby – what’s now called KFC -- and the scent of special herbs and spices was in the air and in my clothing.

I’d eat the stuff once a year, and immediately regret the indulgence.

There’s a tragic case involving a KFC that is being heard by the Australian Supreme Court involving 11-year-old Monika Samaan, who is suing KFC, claiming the source of her salmonella poisoning was a Twister her father said he bought at the outlet on October 24, 2005.

In testimony today, three former staff at KFC Villawood, near Sydney said they would drop chicken pieces on the floor, help themselves to food and throw chicken strips at each other as 'pranks.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports KFC has denied responsibility for Samaan’s illness, which has left her with severe brain damage and quadriplegia.

Hatem Alhindawiq, 20, who began working at the Villawood branch in September 2005, told the court that a few weeks after he started there he and his friends would lock each other in the cool room and ''maybe chuck chips … at each other, that kind of stuff''.

They would also throw chicken nuggets and chicken strips and ''muck around, slap each other and run away, all that sort of stuff'', he said, adding that chicken strips were ''the easiest to chuck''.

Mr Alhindawiq said he saw a friend who was a cook at the outlet accidentally drop a piece of chicken as he was unloading the deep fry basket. It fell onto a ''breading table'' where chicken is floured before being cooked, and then onto the floor. ''He was like, 'Oh, don't worry' … look, it's only flour,' and he grabbed it and he chucked it back in.''

Danielle Cabassi, 19, who worked at the branch for two years from 2005, said she often saw the cooks fail to wash their hands between working with raw chicken and removing cooked chicken from the fryer. They would use tongs, but there was still blood on their hands, the interior student said.
 

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is now food safety quality assured. See, it says so on this lid from a bucket of grease.

But today, the chain admitted breaching hygiene rules at one of the busiest branches in Britain, telling a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, in central London it had inadequate pest control at a branch in Leicester Square, central London.

Environmental health inspectors from City of Westminster Council said cockroaches, mice and flies were found during an inspection of the premises in Coventry Street on August 15 last year.

KFC said it also admitted failing to provide hygienic facilities for handwashing and failing to keep the restaurant clean and in good order during today's hearing.
 

Colonel Sanders and KFC won't buy them.

Campbell Soup stopped using them more than a decade ago because of "quality considerations."

Yet as reported in today’s USA Today, the U.S. National School Lunch Program is an awesome outlet for egg producers struggling to find a market for 100 million egg-laying hens culled each year.

From 2001 through the first half of 2009, USA TODAY found, the government spent more than $145 million on spent-hen meat for schools — a total of more than 77 million pounds served in chicken patties and salads. Since 2007, 13.6 million pounds were purchased.

Because the hens are usually restricted to tiny cages, they often suffer from osteoporosis and have especially brittle bones that easily splinter. When schools reported bones in the chicken, the government stopped purchases for school meals in April 2003. After new provisions aimed at preventing bone splinters — and lobbying by the trade group, United Egg Producers — purchases resumed that July.

Besides the bones issue, some scientists believe spent-hen meat is more likely to carry salmonella, which can be especially dangerous for children. A 2002 study by Washington State University's Avian Health and Food Safety Laboratory found that spent-hen carcasses were four times more likely than broilers to be contaminated with salmonella. The spent hens in the study were from a single plant, so the results offer no proof that similar problems occur on a broader scale. …

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture say spent-hen meat is safe and nutritious. "Mature hens must comply with the same safety standards as any other chicken processed and sold to consumers," says Rayne Pegg, head of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.

Still, the USDA is buying fewer spent hens today. In 2006, it purchased 30% of all spent hens processed nationwide; now, it buys less than 10%.

Craig Brooks, who oversees food distribution at the South Carolina education department, isn't sorry to see fewer spent hens.

"The taste just didn't go over."
 

A 26-year-old woman was arrested Wednesday night by police in Surprise, Arizona, after she allegedly tried to back over a KFC employee with her car because her meal was served sans condiments.

Surprise police said the woman was at the drive-through of a KFC when the argument began because employees failed to provide condiments with her meal.

She entered the KFC and had a verbal exchange with an employee about 7 p.m. Employees ordered the woman to leave the building and a KFC employee followed her out of the building and stood behind her vehicle to get a license plate number.

That’s when she apparently decided to put the car in reverse. And then she did it again.

The woman was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and disorderly conduct.