Perdue Foods, the biggest producer of organic chicken in the United States, reported a review of 68,244 pounds of its gluten-free SimplySmart Organics Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets.
The product “may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically wood,” said an announcement from the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which declared the review on Friday.
The nuggets were sold in frozen 22-oz. plastic bag packages set apart with a “Best By” date of 10/25/19. The FSIS is worried that buyers still have these items in their coolers, and suggests throwing out the chicken or returning it to the point of procurement.
The voluntary review was provoked by three customers who detailed discovering wood in their nuggets. FSIS said it’s not mindful of any antagonistic responses from the items.
There have been three different reviews from other food organizations because of foreign object contamination in the last month, including pork and chicken sausage potentially contaminated with metal, pork sausage perhaps contaminated with rubber, and bacon-flavored pork patties with cheese, also possibly contaminated with rubber.
“Foreign objects in foods is a top reason why products are recalled,” says James E. Rogers, Ph.D., director of food safety research and testing at Consumer Reports. “But neither the USDA or the Food and Drug Administration typically tests for them. That means they’re mostly found in company spot checks or by consumers.”
Expending nourishment with foreign objects can cause mouth lacerations, digestive issues, or worse, depending on what’s in the food.
It’s unclear from regulators how the wood may have gotten into the nuggets. A representative for Perdue disclosed to CR that the wood contamination was “an isolated incident of unknown origin…only minimal amounts of these packages [have] the potential to contain pieces of wood.” Still, the company said that “out of an abundance of caution” it decided to “recall all packages of Perdue Simply Smart organics gluten-free chicken breast nuggets, produced during that same product run.”