The Wegmans Chicken Health Alert That Will Make You Shudder Just Thinking About It

In terms of convenience and variety, going to a grocery store and picking out whatever foods you want to eat certainly beats hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming. This is embodied in, among other products, frozen chicken nuggets. These bags of breaded, fully cooked meats are a hallmark of the modern food industry, but sometimes mass production leaves unintended artifacts behind in the food.

Back in January 2025, the grocery chain Wegmans faced this issue when the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a public health alert about its 46-ounce bags of Wegmans Fully Cooked Breaded Chicken Nuggets. Multiple customers reported finding bone fragments in their supposedly boneless chicken.

While it's nice to know that real chicken goes in the nuggets, unexpected bone fragments pose a choking hazard, especially with children. Since all bags were sold by the time the problem was discovered, consumers were alerted but technically no recall was ever issued. If you're worried about your own freezer, the best by date for affected bags was August 26, so they should have been disposed of by now.

Packaged foods are generally safe from contamination, though it does happen. One of the food recalls that will always haunt Wegmans came in 2024, when small shards of metal were found in some packages of its store-brand Italian Classics Uncured Pepperoni, which made it to eight states and Washington, DC. Not just a choking hazard, pieces of metal in food can also cause internal cuts and damage teeth.

Big manufacturers of frozen chicken nuggets also face these problems. One of the biggest recalls to hit Tyson Foods concerned small pieces of metal found in its Fun Nuggets — dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets marketed to children. In this case, one child unfortunately suffered a minor oral injury before the recall was issued for 30,000 pounds of the product.

Despite these occasional issues, chicken nuggets remain a freezer staple for many families. And if you want the best, you'll have to go with Tyson. When Daily Meal ranked 15 brands of frozen chicken nuggets, Tyson came out on top for both crispiness and flavor. There's even a gluten-free variety that also outperformed the competition. Just remember that object contamination is rare and usually discovered quickly.