Hillshire Is Recalling More Than 15,000 Pounds Of Sausage Due To Bone Fragments

Over Labor Day weekend, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced a recall of roughly 15,876 pounds of Hillshire Farm smoked rope sausage that may be contaminated with bone fragments. The bone fragment contamination was discovered upon a customer complaint. As of September 2, there was one reported oral injury from the bone fragment-contaminated sausage.

The recall affects 14-ounce packages of rope sausage made with pork, turkey, and beef with the lot code establishment number EST. 756A printed on the front of the package with a Use By date of November 11, 2023, printed as "Nov 11 23." The affected product was produced on June 14 and shipped to grocery stores in California, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The FSIS urges anyone with one of these packages of sausage to discard it or return it to where it was purchased. Tyson Foods Inc., the parent corporation of the Hillshire brand, is asking customers to cut the UPC and date code from the package and call or text 1-855-382-3102.

Generally speaking, sausage is bits and pieces of meat leftover in processing other cuts, repurposed into a delicious, cased tube. The USDA has regulations regarding bone matter and other potential contaminants in sausage meat. Sausage not containing mechanically separated meat should be free of bone particulate.

Products labeled as mechanically separated meat are legally allowed to have bone fragments in them, but there are strict rules on the size. Livestock meat (like beef and pork) can have bone fragments measuring 0.5 mm by 0.85 mm. Poultry can have bone fragments 1.5 mm by 2 mm in size, according to the USDA Code of Federal Regulations, Part 9 CFR 319.5 and 9 CFR 381.173. 

The Hillshire sausage ropes in question do contain mechanically separated turkey. It is unclear how large the bone fragments found in the sausage are, how much of the lot was affected, and how the contamination occurred. As of publication, a request for comment by Tyson Foods has not been answered.