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On 18 September 2016, Facebook user Rosemary Thomas shared a four-panel image of what she claimed was a breaded and deep-fried rat served to her at a Harlem-area Popeyes Chicken: The claim was shared over a hundred thousand times, and social media users flooded Popeyes Chicken's Facebook page to express their disgust about the images. Some social media users perhaps recognized Thomas' claim as an iteration of a very old urban legend known as the Kentucky Fried Rat: Like many other long-circulating urban legends, iterations (and parodies) of the deep-fried rat (or mouse) claim pop up from time to time on social media as first-person accounts. Typically, those claims are determined to be misunderstandings or fraudulent attempts to extort money from large companies. We contacted Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, and spokeswoman Renee Kopkowski told us the customer originally arranged to meet with someone from Popeyes on 19 September 2016 to supply a sample of the item in question for testing but then postponed the meeting, so the company has not yet been able to submit the sample to third-party examination. Kopkowski also stated that Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen conferred with suppliers who suggested the depicted material was actually organ meat, and she added that New York City's Health Department subsequently performed a thorough investigation of the Harlem location and found no evidence of the presence of vermin (i.e., rats):
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