NEW YORK — Check your freezer. Perdue Foods is recalling more than 167,000 pounds of frozen chicken nuggets and tenders after some customers reported finding metal wire in the products.
According to Perdue and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the recall affects select lots of three products: Perdue Breaded Chicken Tenders, Butcher Box Organic Chicken Breast Nuggets and Perdue Simply Smart Organics Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets.
FSIS and Perdue determined that approximately 167,171 pounds (75,827 kilograms) of those products may be contaminated with a foreign material after receiving an unknown number of customer complaints. In an announcement Friday, Maryland-based Perdue said the material “was identified in a limited number of consumer packages.”
The company later determined that the material was a very thin wire of metal that had been 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 affected packages “out of an abundance of caution.”
As of Friday, there were no confirmed injuries or adverse events linked to eating these products, according to FSIS and Perdue. Still, FSIS is concerned that the products are in consumers’ freezers.
The now recalled tenders and nuggets can be recognized by the product codes on both Sadness And Online FSIS Announcements. All three affected products have a best buy date of March 23, 2025 and location number “P-33944” on the back of the packaging. They were sold at retailers across the country.
Consumers who have the recalled chicken are urged to throw it away or return the product to the place of purchase. Perdue is offering full refunds to affected consumers who can call the company at 866-866-3703.
Foreign body contamination is one of the main reasons for food recalls in the U.S. today. As recently as November of last year, Tyson Foods recalled nearly 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms) of chicken nuggets after consumers also found metal pieces in the dinosaur-shaped products. In addition to metal, plastic fragments, rockspieces of insects and more ‘foreign’ materials have led to recalls after they ended up in packaged goods.