Vikki Petkova said fried chicken was her favourite food before she made the grisly discovery – but now she has vowed never to eat KFC again.

She bought a four-piece chicken bucket from the fast food store at St James Retail Park and took it home where she made the shocking discovery.

She said: “I had started to eat it and I just saw this wee thing and I thought ‘what is that?’. I thought it looked like a brain. I stopped eating and threw the rest away.

“I was lucky that it was the first one I was eating.” Ms Petkova said the incident has given her a phobia of chicken and has passed the organ to West Dunbartonshire Council’s environmental health department which is carrying out an investigation.

The 29-year-old said she phoned the KFC in Dumbarton immediately after finding the mystery chicken organ and was offered her money back – but wanted to take the matter further.

She then got in touch with KFC headquarters who said their technical department staff have studied the photo of the rogue chicken piece and believe it is a kidney.

She said: “KFC said they’ve identified it as a kidney and as a gesture of goodwill they gave me a voucher for a 10-piece chicken bucket.

“I think it has given me a phobia. I’m all about chicken, when I go on holiday I always eat chicken and now I feel sick when I think of it.

“I’m really not happy with how this has been handled.

“What would have happened it I had eaten it? Would it have made me ill? It’s just not nice to think about. Chicken was one of my main sources of food and now I’m phobic and don’t want to eat chicken. I’m not happy and I won’t eat in KFC ever again.” In reponse to Ms Petkova’s complaint KFC said it is ‘committed to providing great food’ to customers and was ‘sorry for disappointing’ her.

A letter read: “The photo has been viewed by our Technical Department and they confirmed the foreign body has been identified as a kidney, which is part of the giblets found in chickens.

“Although totally natural and not in any way harmful we appreciate that it is unacceptable, unsightly and unappetising for many people. We would like to explain to you how this happened. All our chicken is freshly prepared by hand in store. Unfortunately on rare occasions human error can mean that a giblet is not removed in the preparation process. We are very sorry to hear that this was not the case during your recent visit. Our aim is always that KFC products are prepared to the highest standards of quality and hygiene.” The letter continues to say staff at the Dumbarton store have been informed of the incident, directed to take extra care when preparing chicken and extra training has been offered.

A KFC spokesman said: “We always try and ensure the highest standards in every restaurant and unfortunately, on extremely rare occasions like this, when the chicken is freshly prepared and hand breaded in store giblets like this can be missed. We have apologised to the customer with a gesture of goodwill and have reminded employees to pay extra attention when preparing our chicken to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”