
While now as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet, the hot dog is in fact a foreign object. And those are the ones that pass USDA mustard.

So at least 54.5 percent of the hot dog must be meat. Also occasionally with fat, water, dry milk, cereal or isolated soy protein added, all of it permissible under U.S. Well, OK, that familiar meat, but spiced and blended with ice chips into a batter and then stuffed into casings and cooked and then peeled and often packed in plastic with sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite as a preservative. Most hot dogs are made of the same beef or pork or poultry one would buy elsewhere in the supermarket meat aisle. The second hair was thinner and was actually sticking out of the hot dog.” Reported one caller: “The hot dog appeared to be written on with a black magic marker with the letter ‘T’.” by 3/4 of an inch,” “piece of metal… the size of 2 or 3 grains of sand,” “metal button shaped like a sharp object,” “a bug,” “a sharp hard object,” “two hairs… one was short, black and could have been facial hair. long piece of something, “a metal wire,” “glass and potential mercury,” “a crown,” “a metal staple,” “a metal shard,” “a large piece of bone,” “plastic,” “piece of rubber,” “huge chip of bone,” “huge amount of shredded plastic,” “a metal object… seemed like it was sharpened,” “piece of bone measuring 1 in. “A piece of rubber band (blue),” “what looks like insect larva,” “tiny hard white pieces of plastic about 2-3 mm long,” “a clump of hair or something ratlike,” “the tip of a razor blade,” “sharp metal,” “glass shards,” “a long piece of blue plastic, like very thick plastic wrap,” “a piece of bone, hard, jagged,” “a 3 in. Still, according to the federal records, 38 Americans claim not to have been so fortunate. Flash forward and American consumers have filed just one foreign-object complaint concerning Ball Park Franks from the start of 2013 through Feb. The Journal reported that Sara Lee, the manufacturer of the popular Ball Park Franks brand, had five foreign-object complaints against it from the start of 1997 until mid-1999. Hot dog integrity appears to have improved since 1999, when the Wall Street Journal reported on what had been, by its estimation, “ the wiener’s worst year ever.” Mass-market hot dogs were recalled in spades and blamed by the Centers for Disease Control for listeria poisoning. What’s on the label is what you’re going to find in the product.” Among USDA product recalls, hot dog recalls are relatively rare, and inspectors watch plants closely. Janet Riley, the president of the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council and self-dubbed “Queen of Wien,” says, “We sure do what we can to avoid any kind of foreign object in there, and the records suggest that we do a really good job considering the numbers we produce. “…Caller owns a food manufacturing business and is therefore familiar with processing and packaging and is concerned that if a large silverfish could be packaged with the hotdogs the plant must have an infestation.”

“Caller found a large silverfish inside package of hot dogs,” a food safety official noted in a 2015 report. After eating it he kept picking at his teeth and when I looked he had a piece of metal stuck between his teeth.” “I put a hot dog in the microwave for my toddler and while warming it started sparking and smoking which I thought was weird,” a complaint for 2014 reads, “but took it out and looked at it and didn’t see anything wrong so went ahead and gave it to him. In their wieners Americans reported finding, among other things: “a large ant,” “a peppercorn like material…that appeared to be metal shavings,” “a clump of hair (looks like eyelashes),” “a needle resembling an injection needle,” “a sheared off portion of a metal box cutter,” “a dime,” “a white hex nut” and “a pill.” That’s a very small number-think of the billions of hot dogs that peaceably find their way onto our grills -but together the reports provide a window into how America’s sausage gets made.
