There’s chicken in my vegan salad! Whole Food finds mixup, issues recall

Ack! Some vegans had a meaty surprise in store recently as some Whole Foods curried chicken salads were mislabeled as meatless.

Labels on some curried vegan salads and curried chicken salads were reportedly swapped. So the salads containing chicken were labeled as vegan curried “chick’n.” But it wasn’t just about the chicken (with an “e”).

The vegan salad contained soy, and the chicken salad contained egg. As the Food and Drug Administration noted, there was a serious -- even life-threatening -- risk to people allergic to those products.

And telling the meatless and meat-filled salads apart isn’t that easy. Take a look at the “vegan or meat?” photo at Gothamist.

Consumers didn’t report the issue. According to the Associated Press, it was discovered by a worker in the prepared food section at one of the affected Whole Foods stores.

Luckily, no illnesses have been reported, Whole Foods said. The salads were sold Tuesday and Wednesday in 15 stores in the Northeast. No word of any problems among the Whole Foods stores in California.

The Food Poisoning Bulletin website reported Friday that Whole Foods had issued a recall for “bulk curried salad -- chicken and vegan” because of the egg and soy issue. The locations where the salads were sold, in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, were to post signs notifying customers of the label mixup.

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