Rocks in Trader Joe’s cookies. Insects in its broccoli-cheese soup. Pieces of plastic in Banquet frozen chicken strips.
In recent weeks, U.S. consumers have seen high-profile food recalls for an unappetizing reason: They’re contaminated with foreign objects that have no place on a dinner plate. And while no one wants to bite down on stainless steel in peanut butter or bone fragments in smoked sausage, this type of contamination is one of the top reasons for food recalls in the U.S.
Food safety experts and federal agencies use the terms “extraneous” or “foreign” materials to describe things like metal fragments, rubber gaskets and bits of bugs that somehow make it into packaged goods.
“Extraneous materials” triggered nine recalls in 2022 of more than 477,000 pounds of food regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service — triple the number of recalls tied to food contaminated with toxic E. coli bacteria.
And the size of recalls can reach into the millions: In 2019, USDA reported 34 recalls of more than 16 million pounds of food, spurred in large part by a giant recall of nearly 12 million pounds of Tyson chicken strips tainted with pieces of metal.
Plastic pieces from frayed conveyor belts, wood shards from produce pallets, metal shavings or wire from machinery are all common. So are rocks, sticks and bugs that can make it from the field to the factory.
Some contamination may even be expected, the FDA acknowledges.
“It is economically impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects,” the agency wrote.
Both the USDA and FDA ask companies to promptly notify them when food is potentially contaminated with objects that may harm consumers. The agencies then determine whether recalls are necessary. Most recalls are voluntary.
Regulators said the Banquet issue was discovered when someone reported an oral injury after eating chicken strips. ConAgra Brands Inc. declined to comment beyond the firm’s news release. Trader Joe’s wouldn’t elaborate on how material got into the foods that led to its recent recalls.