The hot dog recall: 1.6 million pounds of meat, and how to check for it | WTF America - media kit | The Receipts - Dataspheres AI

Kayem, a Massachusetts meat company, is recalling about 1.6 million pounds of hot dogs, bacon, ham, deli meats and chicken sausage after a warehouse cooler...

Kayem, a Massachusetts meat company, is recalling about 1.6 million pounds of hot dogs, bacon, ham, deli meats and chicken sausage after a warehouse cooler failed. The USDA rated it Class I, its highest risk level; no one has been reported sick. What was pulled, why warm meat matters, and how to check a fridge. Watch The hot dog recall: 1.6 million pounds of meat, and how to check for it (5 min), with captions The stories 1.6 million pounds One point six million pounds. That's how much meat a company called Kayem is pulling back from stores across the country. Hot dogs, bacon, ham, brisket, deli meats and chicken sausage. The USDA announced it on October seventeenth, and gave it the highest risk level it has. Who is Kayem? So first: who is Kayem? Kayem is a meat company in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Its labels say family crafted since nineteen-oh-nine. Even people who've never heard the name may know its brands. Fenway Franks, the Red Sox hot dog. Al Fresco chicken sausage. Triple M ham. And the recalled food went to grocery stores and restaurants nationwide, plus some to Hong Kong. What changed What changed? On October first, a store complained that a delivery showed up warm. Kayem looked into it and found a warehouse cooler that hadn't held its temperature. The company calls it a cooling system malfunction. The recalled meat was made between late March and early October. On October seventeenth the USDA announced the recall, and by this week it was trending. What's recalled Here's what's on the list. Hot dogs, including Kayem's Old Tyme franks, like the package on screen, and Fenway Franks. Bacon, beef brisket, ham, corned beef and deli meats. Al Fresco chicken sausage. Triple M ham steaks. The full product list is nine pages long, with the barcode numbers for every item. How big it is The exact number from the USDA: one million, five hundred eighty-four thousand pounds. About six months of production. Three plant numbers are printed inside the USDA stamp on the package. That's the key to checking, and we'll come back to it. And the number that matters most: zero. No illnesses have been reported so far. Why warm meat matters Here's why it matters. Cold meat is supposed to stay at forty degrees or colder. Between forty and a hundred forty degrees, germs grow fastest. The USDA calls that the danger zone. And this is ready-to-eat meat. That means people eat it without cooking it first, so there's no heat to kill those germs. The tricky part: food can carry harmful germs and still look and smell completely normal. A sniff test doesn't work here. Class I That's why the USDA used Class I. It's the highest of its three recall levels. Class I means a reasonable chance that eating the food could cause serious health problems, or worse. It's a warning about risk, not a report that anyone got sick. This recall against Kayem's last one For scale: Kayem's last recall was in July of last year. About twenty-four thousand pounds of chicken sausage, over pieces of plastic. This one is about sixty-five times bigger. Same company, very different problem. The company's answer Kayem's president and CEO, Matt Monkiewicz, told CBS Boston the company is recalling the food out of an abundance of caution. And he said: our management team takes full responsibility. He says the problem is fixed and won't happen again. The other side Now the other side, because it matters. No one has been reported sick. The recall is voluntary. The company found the problem from one store's complaint and pulled everything in that window. And Class I describes the risk if the food went bad. It isn't proof that it did. Most of this meat may be perfectly fine. The point is nobody can tell by looking. How to check a fridge So what can people do? Find the USDA stamp on the package. It's a small circle with a plant number inside. Look for M slash P seventy-eight thirty-nine, P twenty-nine thirty-five A, or M ninety-five twenty. They're on screen. A match means don't eat it. Throw it away or take it back to the store. The full list with barcodes is on the USDA recalls page. Questions go to Kayem or the USDA meat and poultry hotline, both on screen. And anyone who feels sick after eating it should call a doctor. Follow the WTF America community for the next one. Listen The episode as audio Download and post Every file of this edition, with its ready-to-paste titles, descriptions and tags. Distribution kit Download the videos, audio, captions and carousel, or use the prepared post text below. Preview the carousel Videos Video 16:9 (1080p MP4) Vertical 9:16 (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) Vertical highlight Raw audio Final mix (lossless WAV) Final mix (MP3) Voice only (lossless WAV) Captions Captions (WebVTT) Captions (SRT) Highlight captions (SRT) Script Script (plain text) Instagram carousel Carousel (ZIP of slides + caption) Ready to post YouTube thumbnail (1280x720 JPEG) Highlight cover (1080x1920 JPEG) Post pack: titles, descriptions, chapters, tags (JSON) Links Podc