Who wants BBQ beef with a side of rubber? Doesn't sound too appetizing, does it? Unfortunately for a couple consumers who purchased pulled barbeque beef from one Ohio-based food company, however, rubber is exactly what they found when they dug into their barbeque beef. The unsavory discovery prompted the company to issue a recall of more than 14,000 pounds, or 7 tons, of their pulled barbequed beef products over concerns that more containers “could be contaminated with rubber.”

USDA Logo; image courtesy of Hamiltonham via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org

The decision to issue the recent recall came after the company received “two consumer complaints of extraneous material contamination,” according to the U.S. agriculture department's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). After launching an investigation into the matter it was discovered that the extraneous material was in fact rubber.How can consumers tell if they have one of the potentially contaminated products, though? For starters, the recalled beef was only “shipped to retailers in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio.” Additionally, the products were produced in September 2017 and are packaged in a 14-ounce sealed plastic tray covered with a paper sleeve and labeled as “Bar-B-Q Sauce With Pulled Beef.” Also, all the recalled products have the establishment number, EST 1917, printed “inside the USDA mark of inspection,” according to the recall notice.Fortunately, there have been no reports of “adverse reactions from consuming the products,” though consumers are being advised to either return the recalled products to the place of purchase or throw them away.

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7 tons of BBQ beef recalled in Ohio, Kentucky, IndianaRecall: BBQ Beef Product Taken Back Due To Rubber Contamination