The Hands-Down Grossest Food Recall In US History

Determining which food recall was the most disgusting in U.S. history is a matter of perspective.  After all, the reasons why food is commonly recalled — bacterial contamination, allergens, and foreign objects — all land somewhere on the nasty spectrum. Topping those is like playing that old schoolyard game, "What's grosser than gross?" At the end of the day, it's all gross, hands-down.

But, while finding plastic, metal, or glass shards, or even bits of golf balls in your favorite meals is definitely unappetizing, those situations don't quite hit the same as discovering, say, traces of human blood in beef and pork, or beet products produced in proximity to a human corpse. Or, for that matter, opening a bag of salad and finding a bat carcass — with head intact — nestled among the leafy greens. For sheer ick factor, the latter incident, which occurred in 2014, rockets to the top of our list of the most stomach-churning recalls ever.

Now, before we delve into the Florida bat case, you may be saying, "Hang on — what about the beets and a corpse?" The recall concerned a sugar-manufacturing plant in Wyoming where a worker died after falling into equipment, and which required the recall of 3,700 tons of food. However, the products in question were animal feed, and no health risks to the company's other human or animal food were found. But the bat-related recall — oh, that's a different story. And did we mention that the people who bought the salad ate the greens before they found the bat?

The story of the bat in the salad took place in 2014, when two people purchased and consumed a 5-ounce container of Organic Marketside Spring Mix, only to discover a dead Mexican free-tailed bat in the package. This is distressing on many different levels, but the greatest immediate concern was infection with rabies, which is considered 100% fatal once clinical symptoms appear. Though not all bats carry rabies, and human deaths due to rabies are rare, bats were the primary source in more than 40 rabies cases between 2000 and 2024. However, the individuals who bought and ate the salad did not test positive for the viral disease.

Rather than launch another produce recall that could affect millions,the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a precautionary recall of a limited number of the spring mix packages bearing specific production codes and best-by dates that were distributed to Walmart locations in the southeastern United States. "Extraneous animal matter" was given as the cause of the recall, which according to food safety industry observers, is rare. However, one noted that these cases involved animals left deliberately in packaged food, which is a whole different kind of nightmare.

Though ghastly recalls of this nature are few and far between, recalls as a whole have been on the rise for several years. Factors for this increase include organizational changes at the FDA and safety regulation readjustments after COVID-19, which have required greater scrutiny in the food industry. Thankfully, "critters" were not listed as one of the reasons for the recall uptick.