Cargill Recalls 8,300 Lbs of Beef Thanks to One Little Blue String

Sometimes it’s the little things that get you down—little things like a 7-inch piece of cotton and polyester string. It’s just such a string that has led Cargill to recall over 8,000 lbs of preformed beef patties.

According to reports, the blue string in question came from the sheets of waxed paper that are used to line and separate patties in multipacks of preformed hamburger patties, in order to keep them from sticking to each other. (Namely, the blue string is used in the packaging for those sheets of paper.) Apparently the string fell into machinery, some of which may have made its way into the burger patties. While production was stopped as soon as the error was discovered, a lot of burger patties were shipped out that day that could contain foreign material quite unsuitable for human consumption.

All of the ground beef burger patties on recall were produced on April 6, 2014. According to Food Safety News, only one product type is on recall, which is as follows:

On the plus side, it’s only a Class 3 recall—no one has been harmed, and it wasn’t another detection of Listeria or some other unsavory foodborne pathogen causing the recall. But even so, it must be frustrating to have to call back all that beef over one little (but potentially dangerous) string.

[SOURCE: Food Safety News; The Daily Review]