Perdue Foods, a US chicken, turkey, and pork processing corporation, has issued a recall for over 167,000 pounds of frozen chicken nuggets and tenders after several customers reported finding metal wire embedded in the products, CBS News reports, citing the Associated Press.
According to Perdue and the US Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the recall covers select lots of three products: Perdue Breaded Chicken Tenders, Butcher Box Organic Chicken Breast Nuggets and Perdue Simply Smart Organics Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets.
The FSIS and Perdue determined that some 167,171 pounds of the products may be contaminated with a foreign material after receiving an unspecified number of customer complaints.
In a Friday announcement, Maryland-based Perdue said the material was “identified in a limited number of consumer packages.”
The company later “determined the material to be a very thin strand of metal wire that was inadvertently introduced into the manufacturing process,” Jeff Shaw, Perdue’s senior vice president of food safety and quality, said in a prepared statement. Shaw added that Perdue decided to recall all impacted packages “out of an abundance of caution.”
There are no confirmed injuries or adverse reactions tied to eating these products to date, according to FSIS and Perdue. Still, FSIS is concerned that the products may be in consumers’ freezers.
The now-recalled tenders and nuggets can be identified by product codes listed on both Perdue and FSIS’s online notices. All three impacted products have a best-if-used-by date of March 23, 2025 and establishment number “P-33944” on the back of the package. They were sold at retailers nationwide.
Consumers who have the recalled chicken are urged to throw it away or return the product to its place of purchase. Perdue is offering full refunds to impacted consumers.
Foreign object contamination remains a major cause for food recalls in the US. In November 2023, Tyson Foods recalled nearly 30,000 pounds of chicken nuggets after consumers reported finding metal pieces within the dinosaur-shaped products. Beyond metal, a range of “extraneous” materials, including plastic fragments, rocks, and insect parts, have led to recalls as they find their way into packaged goods, according to the report.
