The Massive Recall That Pulled 34,000 Cases Of A Beloved Breakfast Food

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A highly versatile comfort food, hash browns can be the pièce de résistance of any good breakfast plate. That's probably why so many frozen brands of hash browns exist, and major fast food chains sell their own versions of this potato dish. However, when something goes wrong on the production end, the breakfast staple can become a health risk. In April 2025, food manufacturer Lamb Weston Inc. recalled almost 35,000 cases (amounting to over 730,000 pounds) of its hash brown products due to a dangerous contaminant. Pieces of plastic ranging in size from 1 millimeter to 8 millimeters were found, which could pose a choking and gastrointestinal hazard. At the time the recall was issued in April of 2025, no one had reported any illnesses or experiences choking.

Lamb Weston Inc. is a food service company based in the U.S., but its products have a presence in multiple countries. Potentially tainted items were shipped to Arizona and Hawaii along with Japan, Kuwait, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.

It's unclear which specific food brands were impacted by the recall, but Lamb Weston is connected to a number of well-known companies. Its hash browns are sold in grocery stores like Kroger and Albertsons. It works with distributors like Gordon Food Service as well. A notable player in the world of fast food, Lamb Weston is also the biggest supplier of McDonald's fries.

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Hash browns have made unfortunate headlines before. In 2017, McCain Foods USA had a problem similar to Lamb Weston's 2025 incident. In this case, the potato products were contaminated with golf ball pieces. According to the FDA, McCain said the bits "may have been inadvertently harvested with potatoes used to make this product." How golf balls got into the spud supply was unclear, but the threat to customers' mouths was pretty obvious. The recall affected Roundy's, Harris Teeter, and Wegmans brands in multiple states.

More recently, in 2022, Lamb Weston came under fire when its shredded hash browns were recalled due to potential L. monocytogenes contamination. One of the biggest potato recalls in U.S. history, the event impacted over 1 million pounds of product. The potatoes were sold under popular brand names like Alexia and Walmart's Great Value in stores around the country and worldwide. This incident was deemed a Class I recall by the FDA (the highest the agency issues), meaning that there was a fairly high chance consumers could be harmed by consuming the contaminated potatoes. L. monocytogenes is a dangerous bacteria that leads to listeriosis illness, which can cause headaches, fever, diarrhea, and even death in vulnerable populations like children and the elderly.