Hillshire Farms recalls almost 16,000 pounds of sausage

Krysyan Edler
·2 min read
2
Hillshire Farms recalled roughly 15,876 pounds of its smoked sausage products earlier this month due to possibly containing bone fragments.
Hillshire Farms recalled roughly 15,876 pounds of its smoked sausage products earlier this month due to possibly containing bone fragments. | Pixabay

Hillshire Farms recalled roughly 15,876 pounds of its smoked sausage products earlier this month due to possibly containing bone fragments.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced the recall on Sept. 2 after receiving consumer complaints, according to the FSIS announcement.

The recall only applies to the “Hillshire Farm Smoked Sausage Made With Pork, Turkey, Beef” with the best buy date of Nov. 11, 2023, and the establishment number “EST. 756A,” which can be found on the front of the package.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service encourages consumers to check their fridges and freezers for the product. If they purchased the product, consumers should throw it away or return it to the place they purchased it.

Has anyone been injured by the recalled sausage?

One consumer suffered an “oral injury,” according to the inspection service. There have been no illnesses or hospitalizations due to the bone fragments.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service classified the recall as a High Class I recall, meaning it “is a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”

Where was the recalled sausage sold?

The recalled smoked sausage was sold in the following states:

  • California.

  • Maryland.

  • New Mexico.

  • New York.

  • North Carolina.

  • Pennsylvania.

  • Virginia.

How did bone fragments get into the sausage?

It is unknown how bone fragments got into the sausage. The safety group and Hillshire Farms did not divulge how the product became contaminated.

The Food and Drug Administration is aware product contamination is bound to happen and noted in its handbook that “it is economically impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

Have there been other recent meat recalls?

On the same day as the Hillshire Farms recall, the safety and inspection service announced a recall of over 245,000 pounds of ConAgra’s Banquet Brand frozen chicken strips due to possibly containing “foreign matter” and “extraneous materials.”

Similar to the sausage recall, a consumer complained after sustaining an oral injury from pieces of plastic when eating the chicken strips, according to the FSIS.

Recalls for products containing “extraneous materials” tripled the number of recalls by the FSIS for products with E. coli contamination in 2022, for a total of nine recalls of over 477,000 pounds of food, The Associated Press reported.