The next time you get chicken from your local Popeyes restaurant in Louisiana, they might be out of gravy. More than 35,000 pounds of the frozen,ready-to-eat pork and beef gravy products the fast food chain uses have been recalled thanks to a “possible foreign matter,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced on Tuesday.
The gravy is produced by Fairmont Foods, Inc., based in Fairmont, Minnesota. The company issued a recall of about 35,145 pounds of the product, which might be contaminated with “extraneous materials, specifically clear pliable plastic,” according to the USDA.
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The products were all produced on May 2, 2019 and were made available in 45-pound cases of nine 5-pound bags of “Popeyes LOUISIANA KITCHEN PORK TASSO AND GROUND BEEF GRAVY,” with the Produced Code 1F0112, Use By: 050220, and the time stamp runs from 1615 to 0022.
Only Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen locations in Louisiana received gravy from the contaminated batch.
Fairmont contacted the FSIS after someone reported a consumer found soft plastic in the gravy. Thankfully, there have been no confirmed reports of reactions due to the product and FSIS has not received any further reports of injuries or illness.
Restaurants have been urged to throw the product away or return to the place of purchase. The FSIS said it was “concerned” that some restaurants might still have the product in their freezers and urged them not to serve it to customers.
Any customer feeling ill after eating the product should contact a doctor, the FSIS said.
Popeyes has more than 2,700 restaurants in the U.S. and around the world. The chain was founded in 1972.
This is not the first time that plastic has sparked a recall of frozen foods. In January 2019, Tyson Foods voluntarily recalled bags of Tyson Fully Cooked Panko Chicken Nuggets because consumers reported finding small pieces of soft, blue plastic in the chicken product.
“A small number of consumers contacted the company to say they had found small pieces of soft, blue rubber in the nuggets, prompting the company to issue the recall,” Tyson said in a statement at the time. “Though the pieces have been found in a very small number of packages, no injuries have been reported with this recall; however, out of an abundance of caution, the company is recalling 36,420 pounds of product.”
Tyson said many of the bags listed the “best if used by” date of Nov. 26, 2019 and urged consumers to discard the product, cut out the UPC and mail it to the company for a full refund.
Photo credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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