Over 256,000 Pounds Of Canned Beef Stew Recalled Due To Wood Fragments

Forbes

30-05-2025

Hormel Foods Corporation is voltartarily recalling around 256,185 pounds of its Dinty Moore canned ... More beef stew product. (Photo: Getty)
Three consumers had a beef about this stew. Apparently, they had found pieces of wood in their Dinty Moore Beef Stew and complained to the makers of the stew, Hormel Foods Corporation. Rather than have anyone else potentially stew over the situation, Hormel decided then to recall voluntarily around 256,185 pounds of its canned beef stew product, according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
The recall affects a specific lot of Dinty Moore Beef Stew that was packaged in 20 ounce cans on February 4, 2025. These cans were shipped across the U.S. If you want to determine whether your Dinty Moore Beef Stew is affected by the recall, the canned answer is look for a lot code of 'T02045', an establishment number of 'EST 199G' and a 'Best By' date of "FEB 2028.'
If you find such things when you are on the can, naturally, your 'best by date' for that should be never. You should either safely discard the product or return it for a refund. Even though there haven't yet been any confirmed reports of injuries from consuming the product, you 'wood' not want to risk it yourself.
In general, it's not a good idea to eat wood if you are a human or even if you are a woodchuck for that matter. Chewing on wood could end up damaging your teeth and gums. Plus, humans lack the digestive enzymes to break down wood. So if you swallow some wood, it's going to remain roughly the same shape and form straight through your gastrointestinal tract.
This is similar to situation where glass was found in bread, leading to a recall, which I wrote about in Forbes earlier this month. Size (and shape) matter here. If the piece is small enough and not too sharp, it will likely just pass through your system until a few days later where poop there is.
However, the risk is that the wood will get caught up somewhere in your GI tract, causing damage to the lining of your GI tract or blockage. This could lead to some type of infection as well. Therefore, if you are concerned about having ingested wood, contact a healthcare professional to get some guidance.
You certainly want to seek medical advice if you have symptoms such as chest or abdominal pain, nausea or vomiting. Other possible symptoms of a potential problem could be changes in bowel movements or body temperature like a fever. Since another potential risk is an allergic reaction to something in the wood, be aware of any itching, rashes, difficulty breathing or any sign that you may be having such a reaction.
Chew marks on a pencil may or may not be a sign of lignophagia (Photo: Getty)
Now if you are thinking, 'wood fragments, yum,' there is something called lignophagia, where you actually like to chew on or eat wood. It comes from a combo of the Latin word 'lignum,' which stands for "wood", and the Greek word 'phago,' which means to 'to eat.' Another term for eating wood is 'xylophagia' when it occurs in human. Lignophagia is a type of pica disorder. Pica is where you want to chew or eat something that has no nutritional value.
You may remember as a kid being handed pencils with bite marks all over them. That's assuming that you are old enough to know what a pencil is. Such bite marks may or may not have been a sign of lignophagia, depending on whether there was a specific preference for wood versus just chewing on something nervously or out of habit.
Nevertheless, one should not be encouraged to chew on or eat wood at any time for all the aforementioned reasons. The recall notice didn't specify the size of the wood fragments that were found in the beef stew. Presumably they weren't like entire planks of wood, since those would have been tough to fit inside a can. So, this situation may end up not having any adverse health effects. But it's still a good idea to check your beef stew and the can from where it came.