Impossible Foods said it recently issued a voluntary recall after learning that small pieces of wood had been found in its Impossible Chicken Nuggets and Impossible Wild Nuggets products.
The plant-based-alternative-meat company described the situation in a post entitled "Doing the Right Thing is Never a Hard Decision."
Impossible Foods said it had received reports that small pieces of wood were found in some of its 13.5-ounce retail packages of frozen Impossible Chicken Nuggets produced by one of its co-manufacturers, OSI Industries, between Oct. 20 and Nov. 23.
The presence of wood chips creates a potential risk of choking, or injury to the mouth or gastrointestinal tract.
Impossible Wild Nuggets differ from the original in that they come in the shapes of vulnerable and critically endangered animals.
"While this issue has affected less than 0.000005% of total packages of this particular product," Impossible Foods said, "this is simply unacceptable given that consumers and customers place their trust in us with every purchase of Impossible Foods they make."
Alert to the Food and Drug Administration
The Redwood City, Calif., company said it alerted the U.S Food and Drug Administration about the issue and was recalling the products "out of an abundance of caution."
"Impossible Chicken Nuggets are an important product for the plant-based-meat category, and they’re loved by consumers, who prefer our chicken nuggets to animal chicken nuggets in restaurants," the company said. "Overall, we have been inspired by the response to this product."
Impossible Foods said OSI had eliminated the use of wood that was determined to be the source of the problem. In addition, the company has a product-distribution team meeting daily to restock it on customers’ shelves as soon as possible.
The company provided a list of SKU and lot numbers of the products covered by the recall.
Consumers who have products covered by the recall can request a coupon for a future purchase.
"In the meantime, please know that we're very sorry this happened, and we're committed to holding ourselves and all of our food-production partners to our very high standards to prevent this from happening again," the company said.
Founded in 2011, Impossible Foods launched its meat-alternative product, the Impossible Burger, in 2016. In April 2019, Burger King began test marketing the Impossible Burger and made it available nationwide by the end of that year.
