14 Food Recalls That Will Always Haunt Wegmans

As reputations go, Wegmans has a pretty good one. The family-owned supermarket, which has more than 100 stores in states dotted across the Eastern U.S., has long been respected for its quality items and range (hey, Wegmans even offers sushi). Its reputation was enough for it to be voted one of the top 10 grocery stores in the country in 2023, by readers of USA Today — but that doesn't make it immune to having to call items back. Wegmans prides itself on its commitment to giving customers the very best it can offer, but its track record for doing so isn't perfect. In fact, there have been multiple recalls throughout Wegmans' history, with some of them applying to a massive amount of product.

Like other grocery stores, the reasons that Wegmans has had to recall products have been pretty diverse — and, it should be said, not always its fault. Wegmans works with multiple different suppliers, and frequent occurrences of potential bacterial contamination in its food's production has led to it asking customers to be careful. On other occasions, Wegmans has had to ask for food back for some pretty shocking reasons, with instances of plastic, rubber, and even metal being found in the products it was selling. These recalls definitely gave Wegmans bosses some sleepless nights, and we're here to show you exactly what went wrong.

When you think of reasons that you shouldn't be drinking dairy products, most of the time it's because your milk has gone bad, right? Well, not in the case of a 2024 recall put out by Wegmans for one of its items. The store recalled the 16-fluid-ounce size of its own-brand Ultra Pasteurized Half and Half due to the potential for antibiotics being in the drink. According to Wegmans, it may have been the case that the raw milk used to make the half and half wasn't rigorously tested for traces of antibiotics, which may have then made it into the final product.

Unfortunately, while antibiotic residue in milk isn't common, it's easy for it to happen. Antibiotics are used on cows for the same reason that they're used in humans — they help to stop them getting sick. However, while milk producers are meant to discard the milk from cows being treated with antibiotics, things can sometimes slip through the net, and the residue ends up in the dairy products on our shelves. When we then drink these products, it can reduce the effectiveness of any antibiotics we may take in the future, making it harder for us to fend off bacteria.

Fresh peaches are rarely a cause for concern, but in the summer of 2020, they suddenly became public enemy number one. Wegmans had to announce a wide recall of its peaches, as well as products that contained fresh peaches, when it was found that they could be contaminated with Salmonella. Bulk and bagged Wegmans and Wawona peaches, supplied by California-based production outfit Prima Wawona, were recalled following a spate of illnesses across multiple states, with 14 people being hospitalized because of the infected fruit.

It wasn't just Wegmans that was affected by this recall. Aldi and Target were also forced to put out recall notices, as they were selling peaches from the same supplier. A subsequent report conducted by the FDA identified several potential sources for the outbreak, and it was suggested that so-called "fugitive dust" may have blown onto the peaches from poultry and cattle operations that were in the area. Luckily, the farm worked with the FDA during the investigation and took its recommendations on board to avoid future outbreaks, so fingers crossed that Wegmans doesn't have a repeat of this problem anytime soon.

What toppings do you like on your pizza? Cheese, ham, pineapple — even other fruity pizza toppings, perhaps? How about pieces of metal? Unfortunately, that's the reality that was presented to Wegmans customers in June 2024, when the store issued a recall of its cured meats, due to the potential for them containing shards of metal. Wegmans Italian Classics Uncured Pepperoni, which was sold in stores across eight different states (and the District of Columbia), was the product in question, and the store mentioned that customers would be able to get a full refund if they had bought it. It was the least they could do, right?

The question remains, though, of how the metal got in there in the first place. Unfortunately, this can happen pretty easily. Metal shavings can be skimmed off the machines that food moves through in processing plants, and is usually due to a deteriorating or poorly-maintained machine. Human error can also cause foreign objects to end up in food, as well as ingredients from other suppliers. Although processing plants frequently use magnets to stop stray metal from getting into food, no production outfit can completely guarantee that it'll never happen.

The last thing you want when you bite into an ice cream cake is food poisoning. However, if you had bought a certain brand of ice cream cake at Wegmans before it was recalled, that's just what might have happened. In 2024, Wegmans had to put out a recall notice for ice cream cakes made by Abilyn's Frozen Bakery, a Massachusetts-based food producer specializing in gluten-free bakes. All of the cakes in Abilyn's line were found to potentially be contaminated with Listeria.

This recall was made even sadder by Abilyn's clear commitment to making its products, and the potential it could have on its business. "We are devastated that this has happened. We are praying that our small family business will be able to weather this storm and thank you all for your continued support," the company said on its website. This recall just shows that potentially contaminated products don't just affect customers. They can also affect the businesses that supply supermarkets like Wegmans, and can considerably knock back their chances of survival — and given that Listeria doesn't cause any clear signs of contamination, it can be difficult for these businesses to spot it until it's too late.

As buying proteins goes, fully-cooked frozen chicken can feel like a safe bet. No need to worry about cooking your chicken to a safe temperature, or making sure it's cooked through to the center: You normally just have to pop these items in the oven for a short period, and they're good to go. Unfortunately, in 2021 Wegmans found out that things aren't that simple, when it had to recall items sold by Tyson Foods.

Approximately 8.5 million pounds of product were recalled overall, although this was spread across multiple different stores, including Walmart and Publix. Although a huge amount of Tyson products were affected, and the food producer made various private label products that had to be recalled too, for Wegmans the load was considerably smaller. The retailer only had to ask customers to bring back the Tyson fully-cooked chicken breast strips and diced chicken pieces that it sold.

Tyson alerted its various retailers and began the recalls itself, due to a potential Listeria contamination. While it pointed out that there was no clear evidence that its products contained bacteria, the recall was undertaken out of precautionary action. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

Some recalls can be pretty small, but others cause retailers to pull back a major amount of stock. This was the case way back in 2007, when Wegmans was forced to ask customers to bring back or dispose of an enormous amount of fresh ground beef, supplied by Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. The ground beef was found to be potentially contaminated with E. coli, a bacteria that can cause food poisoning and some nasty symptoms. "This particular recall does affect a large number of the fresh ground beef products we sell in our stores," said Wegmans spokeswoman Jeanne Colleluori to The Post-Standard. "It didn't hit every product, but it was a majority of our products."

It wasn't just regular ground beef that was affected. Burgers, meatballs, meatloaf, and even stuffed peppers had to be recalled due to their potential to cause illness. Although Colleluori pointed out that E. coli bacteria can be killed by cooking ground beef to an adequate temperature, she also acknowledged that people may not be cooking their items straight away. "Our concern is this product could be in peoples' freezers," she said. Luckily, at the time of recall, there didn't seem to be anybody who got sick from the meat.

How much harm can a tiny pine nut do? As it turns out, quite a lot. In 2011, Wegmans implored customers to bring back their pine nuts, and recalled approximately 5,000 pounds of them sold in their stores due to Salmonella contamination. Unfortunately, this contamination wasn't just a potential issue: By the time the recall notice was put out, 43 people had become sick from eating the pine nuts, across six different states.

The pine nuts that the store sold were distributed by Sunrise Commodities, a New Jersey-based company that imported the nuts from Turkey. The pine nuts sold by Wegmans weren't just sold loose in their bulk containers, either. They also came in a host of prepared foods that folks would have been wise to avoid, including pesto, salad, and vegetable dishes. Wegmans wasn't helped by the fact that the recall covered pine nuts and products that contained them over a period of more than three months, and which were sold in five states in total, making the scale of the problem wide-reaching.

Salad products are particularly susceptible to Salmonella poisoning, due to the bacteria's ability to easily attach itself to leaves, as well as the fact that they're not cooked. This doesn't just stop at romaine and sweet gem lettuce, though. Microgreens can also be contaminated with Salmonella, as Wegmans found out when it had to put out a recall of various products containing them back in 2022. It was found that the supplier who provided them to Wegmans, bio365, may have had contaminants in the soil the microgreens sprouted from.

It wasn't just micro greens, either. The supplier's sweet pea leaves and cat grass were also potentially affected by the Salmonella outbreak, and had to be recalled too. Wegmans was keen to point out that the recall wasn't prompted by anybody getting ill, but rather to be on the safe side. While the cat grass and micro greens were sold separately, the sweet pea leaves came packed with baby kale and baby spinach, forcing folks to throw out their other salad leaves as well. Hey, better safe than sorry, right?

We tend not to think of butter, or other fats, as being vehicles for bacteria. Butter, in particular, is a pretty uncommon host for Listeria bacteria. However, that's not the case when the butter contains other foods that host potential microbes, as Wegmans found in 2022 when it had to recall a butter product. Wegmans Lemon Dill Finishing Butter, supplied by Epicurean Butter LLC, was recalled by the retailer as the dill in it was found to possibly be contaminated. The recall only involved one product, but it spanned over a four-month period.

The problem with Listeria being in a product like this is that, unlike with other foods, you generally don't heat finishing butter up to the necessary temperature required to kill the bacteria. Temperatures of about 150 F or above can kill Listeria, but if you're just putting it on top of your food, it's unlikely to get hot enough to be destroyed. Aside from all this, Listeria shouldn't really be in your food in the first place, right? Luckily for Wegmans, the recall wasn't prompted by anyone getting food poisoning, but it was a pretty close call.

Mislabeling food and not including all of its allergen information can have disastrous and occasionally fatal consequences — which is what made one Wegmans recall especially troubling. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, also known as the FSIS, put out a public health alert for a raw Jamaican jerk-style marinated chicken product sold by Wegmans. This alert was then followed by a recall order issued by the retailer. The reason for the alert was that the chicken's marinade was potentially mislabeled and failed to list the fact that it had milk, soy, and wheat in it.

The marinade didn't necessarily contain any ingredient that had these allergens, but it was found that there may have been an equipment malfunction that caused cross-contamination. This could have been potentially very worrying for Wegmans. All of these allergens can lead to a range of symptoms, but in the worst-case scenarios can result in anaphylaxis and difficulty breathing. Crucially, the public health alert and recall notice wasn't a result of anyone becoming ill from eating the jerk chicken, which was likely a comfort to Wegmans and the FSIS alike.

Hash browns: They're pretty innocuous, right? These simple mounds of shredded potato are hardly dangerous foods. That was the case until 2017, at least, when it was announced that a Wegmans bag of frozen O'Brien Hash Browns was to be recalled. The reason? The hash browns were found to contain pieces of hard plastic and rubber, which apparently came from a golf ball.

Wait, what? Yep, it's true. Apparently, the supplier of the Wegmans hash browns, McCain Foods USA, found that a golf ball may have been inadvertently harvested with its potatoes, with the ball then presumably shredded alongside the potatoes and placed into the hash brown bags. We can only assume that someone on a neighboring golf course took a particularly big swing. This recall actually followed an earlier recall made over a few different hash brown products also made by McCain, for the same issue. The problem with all of this, of course, is that aside from the sheer unpleasantness of having golf ball pieces in food, they also present a significant choking hazard.

There are a lot of reasons why food can be recalled by supermarkets, but one of the most worrying reasons is when it hasn't been inspected properly. This was the case in 2016, when Wegmans had to put out a recall notice for well over 1,000 pounds of chicken. The various different prepared chicken products, which included flavored chicken breast cutlets and whole chicken roasters, had apparently slipped out of the factory without getting a proper standards check, because they had been produced either before or after the standard operations hours. Although there didn't seem to be any specific problems associated with the chicken, the USDA and FSIS urged people not to eat it.

Without proper food inspections, a huge amount of things can go wrong. Aside from food leaving the production facility without proper quality assurance, which can result in a substandard product, it can also increase the risk of foodborne bacteria that can lead to illness. Failing to check the proper handling of food through inspection can make this risk even higher.

Citrus fruits are great for staying hydrated and healthy, thanks to their abundance of vitamin C, so we generally think of them as foods that nourish. In 2020, however, they became something slightly different in the hands of Wegmans. While the rest of the world was dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, Wegmans was dealing with a potential outbreak of its own, and recalled a range of oranges and lemons, as well as products containing fresh lemons, due to the potential of Listeria contamination. The products were sold in stores across six different states, making the problem fairly wide-reaching for the retailer.

These citrus fruits were supplied to the store by Freshouse Produce LLC, and Wegmans had to move quickly when the company alerted that it had found Listeria in its packing facility. Thankfully, they got ahead of the curve on the recall, with no related illnesses reported before they put out the notice. It's a good thing they acted fast, too. Like other foodborne bacteria, Listeria can cause a host of dreadful symptoms, including fever, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. However, in certain individuals, it can be incredibly serious, and in elderly, young, and immunocompromised people, it can even be deadly.

Think of the ingredients in hummus, and you'll likely think of chickpeas and olive oil. One crucial ingredient that's often forgotten by folks who don't make it themselves, though, is tahini. This sesame seed paste gives hummus its creamy smoothness and rich flavor, and it's normally flagged fairly prominently on store-bought hummus products. In 2024, though, Wegmans made a serious error when it failed to declare that its Wegmans Harissa Hummus Topped With Harissa contained sesame, leading to a recall.

While a lot of people know that tahini is made from sesame, it's not immediately obvious by its name alone — and so the lack of allergen information on the packaging was hugely concerning. This was the result of a simple labeling mistake, and no illnesses were reported at the time of the recall. Things could have been pretty dangerous, though. Like other allergens, sesame can cause a range of allergic reactions, and prompt everything from hives to anaphylaxis.