Careful, There May Be Golf Balls in Your Hash Browns
Fore! Someone hit golf balls into the potato fields. Or at least that seems like the most likely explanation for McCain Foods USA's latest recall notice, published on the US Food & Drug Administration website. The recall notice reported that "extraneous golf ball pieces" may have been "inadvertently harvested" with the potatoes used in two pound bags of both Roundy's Brand Frozen Southern Style Hash Browns and Harris Teeter Brand Southern Style Hash Browns. Roundy's Brand can be found in various Illinois and Wisconsin supermarkets, and Harris Teeter Brand can be found in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia and Maryland.
While, according McCain Foods USA, there haven't been any reported injuries yet, chowing down on golf ball shard-laden hash browns "may pose a choking hazard or other physical injury to the mouth." So, if you live in those states, maybe just avoid purchasing frozen hash browns till this is all cleared up. (Plus, making your own hash browns is easy and very, very worth it.)
Golf balls might be the weirdest reason for a food recall in recent memory, but there are a few that give it a run for its money. In January of 2016, Huisken Meat, Walmart's meat supplier, recalled 90,000 pounds of beef when "extraneous wood products" were found in Sam's Choice Black Angus Vidalia Onion burgers during production. Similarly, 5 million pounds of Pilgrim's Pride chicken fingers-a brand that's used for a lot of school lunches-were pulled from shelves when “extraneous materials including plastic, wood, rubber, and metal" were discovered. And just last month, Trader Joe's recalled their breakfast burritos because there may have been plastic in them.
Companies don't usually discuss how their food gets contaminated, but I'm hoping for a really good story about how golf balls got into my hash browns.
