America's fastest-growing grocery store is also the cheapest: Aldi. Once a European phenomenon that has since taken off in the United States, the chain of small and quirky supermarkets stocked with an impressive assortment of national and store brand products now operates thousands of stores in 39 states and serves a monthly customer base of about 40 million people. With cut-rate prices and many items not for sale in most any other grocery or variety store, Aldi finds always arrive on Wednesdays, and the store clearly works hard to provide interesting and tasty products to its customers seeking novelty and value.
While there's a certain way to shop at Aldi to maximize time and energy, and an entire method to decode the price tags to ensure a money-saving Aldi trip, there's something that even the stores' most fervent customers likely don't factor in: potentially dangerous food that could make them sick. Over the past decade, Aldi has faced, managed, or ordered numerous product recalls to get as much of a handle as it could on foodborne illness or injury-causing contaminants. Here are all the times Aldi's millions of customers were put at risk for buying foods that were later recalled.
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The industrial freezing of food is a scientific marvel that allows produce to be shipped and stored and retain its flavor and nutritional benefits for months or even years. Freezing can stop or severely slow down the natural decay of food, but it can't quite stop the growth or persistence of food-based illness. Listeria monocytogenes, the pathogen that can cause listeria contamination and infection in humans if consumed, was found in bagged peas prepared for sale at Aldi in 2017. The grocery chain recalled six lots, comprising 2,000 packages, of its Season's Best Frozen Sweet Peas. They'd been sold at Aldi stores in West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Iowa, Illinois, and Florida.
No cases of illness, either before or after the recall took effect, were reported, so Aldi acted out of caution rather than out of a need to quell an outbreak. The problem lay with the supplier, Lakeside Foods, which discovered listeria in its supply after it had shipped out all those units to various Aldi branches.
There are more than 2,400 Aldi stores in the U.S., but well over 5,000 in Europe, which made recalling products secretly made with an unpalatable and concerning meat source all the more challenging. It's impossible for Americans to buy horse meat, but when Europeans did on accident, it amounted to likely the biggest scandal in Aldi history.
In 2013, independent lab results confirmed what the Food Safety Authority of Ireland first noticed: that supposedly beef-based or beef-containing products sold across numerous grocery chains in multiple European Union member nations actually sourced its protein from horses. As agencies across Europe began investigations into how such a thing could happen and to find who was responsible, Aldi acted quickly to remove chain-wide any potentially horse-meat-tainted products, including ground beef, beef patties, and frozen dinners like its store brand Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagne and Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti Bolognese. An especially egregious offender, testing indicated that those Italian-style meals had a meat profile of anywhere from 30% to 100%.
The blame lay with meat suppliers Findus, Comigel, and ultimately Dutch wholesaler Willy Selten BV. Accused of selling 300 tons of horse meat to various commercial organizations, company head Willy Selten was arrested in April 2013 and was ultimately sentenced to more than two years in prison.
Between June and September 2020, the U.S. federal agency the Centers for Disease Control monitored an uptick in salmonella infection. In the initial outbreak, more than 700 people reported contracting foodborne illness, of which 167 required hospitalization. Investigation and testing indicated a common source and the probable cause: onions processed and distributed by Thomson International Inc. While red onions were discovered to be the first infected food, white and yellow varieties also produced by Thomson carried the salmonella pathogen due to cross-contamination by sharing resources and proximity.
In August 2020, Thomson International recalled its recent harvests of all yellow, white, and sweet yellow onions out of an abundance of caution to prevent further infection. Simultaneously, Aldi issued a voluntary recall of its Thomson-made Onions 52 brand of onions, specifically two and three pound bags of sweet, red, white, and yellow styles that had been distributed to Arkansas, Alabama, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Customers could return purchased onions to the Aldi store of purchase for a refund, or just throw them away. By the time the outbreak was contained, 1,127 people in 48 states had fallen ill from eating tainted Thomson onions.
In the U.K., the Food Standards Agency is a government-affiliated organization that inspects and certifies edible products meant for nationwide distribution and also conducts investigations into the causes of tainted food. In March 2024, it worked with commercial and industrial baker Signature Flatbreads U.K. to recall one lot of one product intended for sale at one retailer, Aldi. The company's Village Bakery Tortilla Wraps were subject to a recall due to potential contamination due to metal pieces allegedly placed there on purpose through an act of tampering.
Signature Flatbreads U.K. was able to determine that eight-packs of thin, tortilla-style sandwich wraps had been targeted, and those particularly produced in a run with an expiration date of April 29, 2024. The FSA and Signature Flatbreads U.K. urged customers to not eat the product should they have it in their homes, as ingestion of metal can lead to oral or internal injury, but rather to return it to the Aldi location where they bought it.
There are so many stages in how sausage gets made that there are multiple opportunities for bone fragments to make their way into the product. Processed sausage is essentially flesh that's been mechanically taken off of animal carcasses and then ground and pulverized into a fine paste and then extruded into casings, and a bit of inedible bone can wind up contaminating a little or a lot of those meat tubes. Somewhere along the production line in late 2023, small pieces of bone wound up in shipments of Parkview Turkey Polska Kielbasa, a traditional-style Polish sausage made with poultry. Supplier Salm Partners makes the item for sale at Aldi, and in January 2024, the chain had to order a substantial recall after at least one person endured a small oral injury (and others complained) when they bit into bone.
The recall concerned 13-ounce, vacuum-sealed packages of the turkey sausage, all with one particular UPC code. That constituted more than 130,000 pounds, or about 160,000 individual packs of product. Nearly 3,000 Aldi stores across 35 states were impacted.
Fratelli Beretta makes a lot of charcuterie and Italian deli meat products, packaging them up in shallow plastic trays and then sealing them tightly with films bearing its own company name or of those with whom it contracts. Aldi sells Fratelli Beretta cured meats under its store brand name, Appleton Farms Gourmet Deli Selection, and so it participated in a large recall with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service in early 2024 when the supplier discovered that it was responsible for an outbreak of the bacteria that sauces salmonella poisoning in human beings.
In February 2024, Aldi recalled six-ounce packages of Appleton Farms Gourmet Deli Selection from certain stores in 38 states and the District of Columbia. It included in its selection sliced Coppa, which Fratelli Beretta believes wasn't properly processed, allowing salmonella pathogens to survive. By the time the recall, investigation, and outbreak all subsided, 104 people fell ill from eating infected Coppa, and it was especially serious for the 27 individuals who needed to be hospitalized.
So named for being a related series of tree-grown produce with a large, inedible pit or stone in the inside, stone fruit are also susceptible to the same foodborne diseases across its many varieties. In November 2023, the Food and Drug Administration put out an alert that stone fruit including plums, peaches, and nectarines were currently harboring and spreading the bacteria that causes listeria poisoning.
During the initial outbreak of the listeria, 10 people across seven states who ate affected stone fruit were hospitalized for treatment, while one person died and one pregnant woman's premature labor was an effect of contracting the pathogen. HMC Farms, the large-scale fruit distributor responsible, recalled peaches, plums, and nectarines from many of its clients, including Albertsons, Publix, Walmart, and Aldi. The chain participated in the recall and found that its stores in 29 states had carried the recall-targeted fruit, peaches sold individually and in 2 pound bags along with packaged two pound bags of plums and nectarines.
Salmonella is a type of bacteria-caused foodborne illness that attacks the intestines. Infected humans may notice symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal cramping, nausea, fever, and vomiting, and the problem is commonly associated with consumed tainted meat or eggs. Salmonella can also be spread via raw, uncooked fruit, particularly via pre-cut, packaged fruit. From October 2023 until December 2023, 407 people became afflicted with salmonella after eating contaminated fruit, primarily cantaloupe and some because of pineapple. Victims were spread across 44 states, and just under half of the victims required hospitalizations, and six people died during the outbreak, including four people from Minnesota.
With the CDC's guidance, 11 fruit processors and retail operations recalled potentially infected fruit. In early 2023, Aldi, which got its stock from suppliers Sofia Produce and DBA TruFresh recalled its stock of whole cantaloupes, cut and plastic-packaged chunked cantaloupe, and pineapple spears. Those were variously sold at stores in Michigan, Kentucky, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
Aldi dealt with another, separate fruit-based listeria outbreak in 2023. Citing the possibility of contamination, the grocery company recalled 38,909 cases of frozen products Season's Choice Mixed Fruit and Tropical Blend Fruit from stores in 27 states that had been sold as far back as October 2022. Fortunately, no Aldi customers reported an illness after eating those fruit blends.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) thoroughly investigates food before it can enter the general supply or be distributed to retail outlets around the country. It's a particularly vital service for imported goods. Meat processed in Canada has to be inspected before it can be sold in the U.S., the FSIS's sign-off a guarantee that it's safe for human consumption and free of foodborne illness. Without that look, it's a possibility that food could be tainted, which was the concern that led to a multi-ton recall of boneless pork products in May 2023.
Canada-based Eastern Meat Solutions Inc., a supplier of pork to national U.S. grocery chains including Walmart and Aldi, recalled 40,763 pounds of ribs that had somehow escaped inspection. Aldi sells Eastern Meat Solutions products under the Park Street Deli brand name, and as part of the recall, ordered its stores to stop selling Sweet Chipotle Boneless Pork Ribs with Sauce and Park Street Deli Hawaiian Style Boneless Pork Ribs with Sauce. All parties involved, including customers, avoided disaster when no one fell ill from consuming any of the pork after it missed certification and before the recall.
One of Kraft's flagship products, Kraft Singles are a heavily processed, dairy-adjacent food also known as American cheese or pasteurized prepared cheese product. Those thin slices are versatile, melt up quickly and easily, boast a much longer shelf life than real cheese, and are convenient because they're individually wrapped. It's that pull-apart wrapper that caused major problems when in September 2023, a Kraft recall that affected millions was set into motion.
Due to an equipment issue at a processing center, strips of the plastic meant to keep the cheese safe was persistently sticking to those very Kraft Singles even after the rest of the plastic sheeting was removed. "If the film sticks to the slice and is not removed, it could be unpleasant and potentially cause a gagging or choking hazard," Kraft Heinz explained in a recall notice. To limit the potential of any of its customers suffocating on or swallowing pieces of plastic, Kraft Heinz recalled 83,800 cases of Kraft Singles. Aldi, which stocks the product in its stores nationwide, helped Kraft recall the problematic product, taking the 16-ounce iteration of Kraft American Singles out of its outlets in 37 states.
In 2019, Aldi frozen foods supplier J&J Snack Foods Corp., heard from multiple customers about inedible, foreign bodies found in products they'd bought at the grocery store chain. Under the Bremer Classic label, Aldi sells a line of heat-and-eat sandwiches, a house brand version of Hot Pockets. After involving the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, Aldi and J&J Snack Foods jointly recalled two varieties of the frozen pocket meals: the Bremer Classic Pepperoni Pizza Hot Stuffed Sandwiches and the Bremer Classic Ham & Cheese Hot Stuffed Sandwiches. The problem: Two lots of 9-ounce boxes of both products were distributed while potentially contaminated with pieces of firm, nearly-translucent plastic.
Sold exclusively at Aldi stores, J&J recalled 56,578 pounds of Bremer Classic sandwiches, or roughly 100,000 total boxes. They'd been sold at supermarkets in 29 states, but nobody reported accidentally ingesting or injuring themselves on the rogue bits of plastic in question.
In early 2019, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service consumer protective agency fielded two customer complaints regarding metal found in chicken strips produced by major poultry processor Tyson Foods. By the time the matter was investigated and a recall of potentially affected products was underway, the FSIS had heard from six consumers that found metal in Tyson chicken, and three of those who found it experienced some kind of injury to their mouth as a result of accidental ingestion. In May 2019, Tyson recalled more than 11.8 million total pounds of precooked, frozen, heat-and-eat chicken strips which had been produced between October 2018 and March 2019.
Among the more than 30 products recalled by Tyson were two that the company produced for Aldi, intended to be sold under one of the chain's house brands. Kirkwood Buffalo Style Chicken Strips and Kirkwood Honey BBQ Chicken Strips in 25 ounce bags were ordered back to the point of sale. Aldi also took the items off the sales floor in 25 states.
E. coli is a particularly vicious bacteria that can cause serious GI symptoms, such as cramping, fever, diarrhea, and hemolytic uremic syndrome, which itself can lead to kidney malfunction or death. The germ is found in the feces of livestock and can make its way into the meat of those animals during processing; humans may unwittingly ingest E. coli if affected meat isn't cooked at or to a temperature high enough to kill the bacteria. Anytime E. coli is found in the food supply, it's a potential public health emergency. In the summer of 2018, 18 people became very sick, and one person died, due to the presence of E. coli in ground beef. The USDA determined that the contamination likely took root at a facility run by processor Cargill Meat Solutions. Because it can take more than a month for symptoms of E. coli poisoning to manifest, the problematic meat had been distributed around the United States when the first patients reported their illnesses.
Cargill ordered an immediate recall of more than 132,000 pounds of a dozen different multi-pound ground beef products. Aldi had purchased Cargill products, too, and in September 2018, it asked customers who'd shopped at its stores in 11 states to get rid of any 80% lean ground beef patties they'd purchased.
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