Food safety officials have served a retail outlet of American fast food chain, Fried Chicken (KFC) at Thiruvananthapuram with a closure notice on Monday after it received several complaints about live worms being found in the chicken served to a customer.

The incidence has shocked KFC customers, who take the brand as an assurance of quality. Food safety officials said that they took the step after they were alerted by the public through complaints on phone. A senior official said that a family had complained that they had found live worms in their chicken served to them at the outlet.

The official said that they were skeptical about finding live worms in chicken that has been cooked, but upon investigating they found the complaints to be true. District Designated Food Safety Officer D. Sivakumar visited the outlet with several officials and collected the samples of the food.

Officials explained that the outlet receives frozen chicken in bulk from Coimbatore and the meat might have been spoilt somewhere along the supply chain due to lack of proper cool storage.

Meanwhile, outlets are reporting regular business as customers are arriving at the same rate as before.