Perdue Farms Pulls Chicken In Recall After Customer Complaints

A nationwide recall is affecting Perdue Foods, specifically its frozen chicken nuggets, and tenders.

Thin metal wires were found in the chicken, and Perdue Foods initiated the voluntary recall after several phone calls from concerned customers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this past Friday that Perdue Foods will recall 167 thousand pounds of its frozen chicken that was shipped to all retail locations across the country.

The products include Simply Smart Organic Gluten-Free Breaded Chicken Nuggets, Breaded Chicken Breast Tenders, and, finally, the Butcher Box Organic Free Full Frozen-Cooked Breast Chicken Nuggets.

All products come with a best-if-used-by date of March 23, 2025. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “items were shipped to retail locations nationwide and sold online directly to customers.”

Perdue Foods Senior Vice President of Food Safety and Quality Jeff Shaw said in a statement on the company’s website, “We determined the material to be a very thin strand of metal wire that was inadvertently introduced into the manufacturing process. Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to voluntarily recall all of these packages of products.” The recall notice is the first image that pops up when you visit their website.

No illnesses or injuries have been reported in this recall. Perdue Farms began just over 100 years ago when a farmer named Arthur Perdue from Salisbury, Maryland, and his wife Pearl had a few chickens. They soon moved to selling eggs and chicks to other farmers. Their son joined the business in 1939, and in the 1950s, the company was incorporated and was contracting with local farmers to take on more chickens. By the end of the 1960s, Perdue had started running the state of Maryland’s first poultry processing plant, which helped put them ahead of their competition.

Keeping up with consumer demand, Perdue decided to stop using antibiotics in the chicken feed in 2007. Perdue began their Harvestland brand, selling only products that were free from antibiotics. Just seven years later, Harvestland grew to a $200 million business, and the company used the “antibiotic-free” label on not just Harvestland, but Simply Smart and Perfect Portions as well. With 36 plant facilities across the US, Perdue Farms was estimated to have a value of $8 billion in 2021.

Perdue Foods is no stranger to controversy. The company has faced several lawsuits, notably from the Humane Society of the United States in 2010 for their production practices which were viewed as “inhumane.” Perdue responded with a statement saying their practices, “exceeds the National Chicken Council guidelines in several areas, including monitoring the air quality in the poultry house, video monitoring of live-bird handling areas of the processing plant.”