Pepperoni Hot Pockets Recalled for Contaminants
“Check on your friends who bit into a ham and cheddar hot pocket thinking it was pepperoni pizza” the official Hot Pockets account joked over Twitter in mid-January. This little joke became oddly prescient in the wake of a massive recall of pepperoni Hot Pockets. In fact, a more appropriate warning would have been to check on friends who bit into a pepperoni Hot Pocket, because these Hot Pockets were found to contain shards of plastic and glass.
Nestle Prepared Foods, the parent company of Hot Pockets, has recalled over 762,000 pounds of pepperoni Hot Pockets due to, “extraneous materials, specifically pieces of glass and hard plastic” according to a USDA report.
The Hot Pocket’s tweet, released a day before the recall was announced, had many consumers checking in about their purchases.
It was consumers who noticed the problem. According to the recall, four customers reported “extraneous material” in their food and one received minor oral injury. As of yet, no one else has gotten hurt.
At the urging of the USDA, people should check their freezers for Hot Pockets. If they're in there, confirm they are not affected by the recall; look for EST. 7721A. The lot codes are 0318544624, 0319544614, 0320544614, and 0321544614. The recall is a class I indicating the most serious type of recall, “a health hazard situation in which there is a reasonable probability that eating the food will cause health problems or death” according to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Services. Currently, the recall is just for pepperoni Hot Pockets.