LOS ANGELES — A man’s claim that he was served a fried rat at a KFC restaurant in California has been refuted by the company following a DNA test of the meat, the company said on Monday.

“Recently, a customer questioned the quality of a KFC product, and this received considerable publicity given the sensational nature of his claim,” the company said in a statement to ABC News today.

The customer’s attorney gave the product to KFC on Friday for testing at an independent lab. DNA tests confirmed the product was chicken and not a rat as the customer claimed, according to KFC.

KFC spokesman Rodrigo Coronel said the man who made the false claim “wasn’t cooperating with an investigation,” so his attorney obtained the ‘rat’ and gave it to an independent lab for testing.

Coronel also alleged the customer lied about being told the piece of chicken was a rat.

“We did an internal investigation and talked to all employees. That statement is false,” Coronel wrote. “The right thing for this customer to do is to apologize and cease making false claims about the KFC brand.”

The customer, identified as Devorise Dixon, refuted the claims made by KFC last week. He has reportedly refused to communicate directly with the company.

“Honestly, it doesn’t matter what others think I know what I bit into and what it looks like never in life have .. seen a chicken strip with a long tail,” he wrote last week.

The photos were posted on Facebook on June 12 and have been shared over 138,000 times.