Panera Recalls Chicken Tortilla Soup With Glove Bits In It
The pieces of glove were found in the prepackaged variety of the chicken tortilla soup.
If you live in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, or Texas and you've recently purchased a prepackaged container of Panera Bread's chicken tortilla soup, you might want to take an extra close look at it. Maybe pour it through a sieve. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has announced a recall of 6,384 pounds of the Panera brand product, produced by Blount Fine Foods out of McKinney, Texas. The issue: There might be bits of glove in it.
Specifically, shreds of gray nitrile glove. So if you're chewing on some chicken that seems especially rubbery, I'd spit that out as fast as you can. This recall only affects 16-oz. containers of Panera Bread at Home Chicken Tortilla Soup, with lot code 070121-1V, marked with a use-by date of September 9, 2021. The establishment number printed inside the USDA inspection mark should say "P-13130" on it.
This comes by way of multiple consumer complaints; several people reported finding bits of glove inside their soup. I can't imagine that's a fun discovery. I'm not sure that could top, oh say, part of a men's dress shirt, but either way, you'll probably want to dump the soup rather than take your chances with it. That, or you can return the Panera-brand container to whererever you purchased it.
There's a reason we have a recall system like this in place. Recalls earlier this year alone have involved arsenic in baby food, listeria-contaminated chicken, Hot Pockets that might have had bits of glass and plastic in them, and issues with multiple pet food brands, including a salmonella risk. In all cases, the FSIS keeps consumers up to date on its website, and specifies whether there is simply potential risk in these products or whether individuals have actually been made sick by them.
If you recall (get it?) the latest bit of news from Panera, it's that the company has rolled up three brands—Panera, Einstein Bros. Bagels, and Caribou Coffee—under one giant megazord mecha head to become a huge breakfast-slinging machine. Amid all this excitement, someone at the company should really be keeping an eye on the soup.