Quick Answer: The white rice recall 2026 involves Lundberg Family Farms Regenerative Organic Certified White Jasmine Rice, sold in 32-ounce (2-pound) bags, due to possible contamination with unspecified foreign material. The recall started small in April 2026 when Wegmans pulled about 4,500 cases, and the FDA reissued and expanded the notice on August 25, 2026, putting the total at 27,324 packages, or 54,648 pounds. Affected bags carry UPC 073416040281, lot codes 260201MA or 260202MA, and best-before dates of February 1 or February 2, 2027. The FDA classifies it as a Class II recall, meaning any health effects would likely be temporary. A separate recall also hit Ben’s Original Ready Rice products in August 2026 over possible small stones. If you have matching rice, don’t cook or eat it — return it for a refund or throw it away.
In This Guide
- What’s Recalled and How to Identify It
- Recall Timeline: April to August 2026
- Which States Are Affected
- Which Retailers Sold It
- Why the Rice Was Recalled
- What a Class II Recall Actually Means
- The Separate Ben’s Original Rice Recall
- Why 2026 Has Seen So Many Food Recalls
- General Rice Safety: Beyond This One Recall
- What to Do If You Have This Rice
- Frequently Asked Questions
What’s Recalled and How to Identify It
The product at the center of the white rice recall 2026 is Lundberg Family Farms Regenerative Organic Certified White Jasmine Rice, sold in 32-ounce (2-pound) bags. The company, which operates as Wehah Farms and is based in Richvale, California, voluntarily recalled the product due to the possible presence of foreign material. The FDA and multiple outlets have not specified exactly what that material is, though similar rice recalls in the past have involved stones, wood fragments, or bits of plastic or metal picked up during processing.
To check whether a bag in your pantry is affected, look for all three of the following on the package:
- UPC code: 073416040281
- Lot codes: 260201MA or 260202MA
- Best-before dates: February 1, 2027 or February 2, 2027
Only rice matching all three identifiers is part of the recall. Other Lundberg products, including its brown rice, basmati rice, wild rice blends, and Carolina Gold Rice Middlins, are not affected and remain safe to use.
Recall Timeline: April to August 2026
This recall has unfolded in stages rather than as a single announcement, which is part of why it’s resurfacing in the news months after it began:
- April 4, 2026: Wegmans became the first retailer to publicly announce the recall, pulling the affected jasmine rice from its shelves. Lundberg confirmed to USA Today that it had issued a voluntary Class II recall covering roughly 4,500 cases.
- May 7, 2026: The FDA formally logged the recall with a Class II designation, its middle severity tier.
- August 25, 2026: The FDA’s enforcement database republished and expanded the recall, raising the confirmed total to 27,324 packages, or 54,648 pounds — a far larger scope than the original April announcement suggested.
- August 29, 2026: A Lundberg Family Farms spokesperson said the affected product had already been removed from store shelves months earlier and that the issue was isolated to a single production run, with no illnesses reported.
In other words, no new contaminated rice hit shelves in August. What changed was that the federal enforcement record was updated and picked up widely by news outlets, which is why searches for “white rice recall 2026” spiked even though the underlying recall began back in the spring.
Which States Are Affected
Here’s where this recall gets genuinely confusing: multiple news outlets have published different state lists, and they don’t fully agree. The most consistently cited list, appearing across several major outlets, names 12 states:
California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Other reports have added Louisiana and Virginia to make a 13-state list, while at least one outlet published an entirely different set of states — including several in the South and Midwest that don’t appear anywhere else in the more widely cited version. The discrepancy likely stems from how different publications interpreted or excerpted the FDA’s distribution notes, since the underlying federal record itself hasn’t publicly clarified which version is definitive.
This kind of inconsistency isn’t unique to this recall. FDA enforcement reports list the states where a distributor initially shipped a product, but grocery supply chains routinely move goods across state lines afterward through regional warehouses, secondary distributors, and chain-wide restocking. A bag distributed to a warehouse in one state can easily end up on a shelf in a neighboring state that never appears on the official list. Because of that, food safety advocates generally recommend treating any nationally distributed recall as a “check your kitchen regardless of location” situation rather than relying on the state list to rule yourself out. Since the rice was also sold at large national chains including Target and Walmart, it’s worth checking your bags no matter where you live — distribution lists for recalls are often broader than initially reported, and rice can sit in a pantry for months after purchase without anyone noticing the printed lot code.
Which Retailers Sold It
The recalled Lundberg jasmine rice was sold at several major grocery chains, including:
- Wegmans (the first retailer to announce the recall)
- Target
- Walmart
- Giant
- Hy-Vee
- Whole Foods
Availability varies by location, so not every store carrying the Lundberg brand necessarily received the affected lot codes. As with the state list, the safest approach is to check the UPC, lot code, and best-before date on your specific bag rather than relying on where you shopped.
Why the Rice Was Recalled
The FDA’s enforcement listing cites the reason as “potential contamination with foreign material” without specifying what that material is. This is common in early-stage food recalls — companies often issue a recall notice as soon as an internal quality check flags a problem, even before every detail about the contaminant has been confirmed publicly. Some secondary reports have speculated the issue involves small stones, similar to other 2026 rice recalls, but that specific detail has not been confirmed by Lundberg or the FDA in the primary recall notice.
What is confirmed: Lundberg says the issue was isolated to a single production run at its Richvale, California facility, and as of the company’s August 29 statement, no illnesses had been reported in connection with the recalled rice.
What a Class II Recall Actually Means
The FDA sorts recalls into three severity classes, and understanding where this one falls helps put the risk in perspective:
- Class I: The most serious tier, used when there’s a reasonable probability that using the product will cause serious health consequences or death.
- Class II: The tier assigned to this rice recall. It covers situations where use of the product may cause temporary or medically reversible health consequences, and where the probability of serious harm is remote.
- Class III: The lowest tier, for products unlikely to cause any adverse health effects but that violate FDA labeling or manufacturing rules.
A Class II designation doesn’t mean the recall should be ignored, but it does mean the FDA views the realistic risk as limited to something like minor injury from an unexpected foreign object rather than a life-threatening hazard. That’s a meaningfully different risk profile than a Class I recall, such as the Salmonella-linked blueberry recall earlier in 2026, which involved a more direct illness risk.
The Separate Ben’s Original Rice Recall
Adding to the confusion this week, Ben’s Original also issued its own voluntary rice recall in August 2026 — a completely separate action from the Lundberg jasmine rice recall, though both involve rice and both are attracting search interest under similar terms.
Ben’s Original recalled a limited number of its Ready Rice products due to the possible presence of small stones naturally occurring from the rice farm. The affected items include:
- Ben’s Original Ready Rice Long Grain White Rice (batch codes 533ELGRV22 and 534ALGRV22, best-by 8/2026)
- Ben’s Original Ready Rice Whole Grain Brown Rice (batch codes 534AMGRV22, 534BMGRV22, and 534DMGRV22, best-by 8/2026)
- Ben’s Original Ready Rice Long Grain & Wild Rice (batch codes 533BMGRV22, 533CLGRV22, and 533CMGRV22, best-by 8/2026)
These products were distributed by Associated Grocers, C&S, and Dot Foods to retailers including Target, HEB, United Markets, Amazon, and Piggly Wiggly. As with the Lundberg recall, no illnesses had been reported as of the company’s announcement. If you have Ben’s Original Ready Rice at home, check the batch code and best-by date on the bottom seal of the package separately from the Lundberg identifiers above — these are two distinct recalls with different products, different companies, and different batch numbers.
Why 2026 Has Seen So Many Food Recalls
The Lundberg and Ben’s Original rice recalls are part of a noticeably active year for U.S. food safety alerts. Earlier 2026 recalls have included iceberg lettuce linked to a multistate Cyclospora outbreak, beef, eggs, jalapeños, alfalfa sprouts, and a Class I recall of blueberries tied to a Salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 12 people across Florida and Georgia. Whole Foods also recalled salsa and guacamole over Salmonella concerns around the same period.
Food safety researchers generally attribute a busier recall year to a combination of factors: increasingly sensitive detection technology at processing facilities, tighter FDA traceability rules that came into fuller effect over the past two years, and simply more media attention on recalls that in past years might have stayed local. It doesn’t necessarily mean the food supply itself is less safe than before — in many cases, it means problems are being caught and reported faster.
There’s also a structural reason recalls like this one seem to resurface unexpectedly months later. The FDA’s enforcement database is a rolling, searchable record, and updates to an existing recall — like the August expansion of the April Lundberg notice — get treated by news aggregators and search engines almost identically to a brand-new recall announcement. That’s part of why “white rice recall 2026” spiked in search interest in late August even though nothing changed about which rice was on shelves; the underlying event was the same recall, just with a wider confirmed scope than originally reported. Consumers checking recall news periodically, rather than relying on a single announcement from months earlier, is a reasonable habit regardless of which specific recall prompted the search.
General Rice Safety: Beyond This One Recall
Foreign material contamination in rice — whether stones, husks, or occasional processing debris — is a known, if uncommon, risk across the entire category, not just with these two brands. Rice is grown in open fields and processed through mechanical sorting and milling equipment, and while modern optical sorters catch the vast majority of debris, no system is perfect. A few practical habits reduce risk regardless of brand:
- Give dry rice a quick visual check before cooking, especially with bulk or minimally processed varieties. Spreading a small handful across a light-colored plate makes stones or discoloration easy to spot.
- Rinse rice before cooking. A thorough rinse under running water, swirling the grains by hand, helps surface debris float off or settle differently than the rice itself, and is standard practice for flavor and texture reasons anyway.
- Store rice in a sealed, labeled container rather than leaving it in the original bag at the back of a cabinet. If you do transfer rice to a canister, keep the original bag or a photo of its UPC and lot code until the rice is used up, so you can check it against future recall notices.
- Sign up for recall alerts through the FDA’s email notification system or a retailer’s recall alert program if you shop somewhere that offers one, like Wegmans or Kroger. This tends to catch updates faster than relying on news coverage of individual recalls.
None of this is a substitute for checking your specific bag against an active recall notice, but it’s a reasonable baseline for anyone who cooks rice regularly and wants to reduce risk from the category as a whole, not just the two products named here.
What to Do If You Have This Rice
If your bag matches the UPC, lot code, and best-before date listed above, follow these steps:
- Don’t cook or eat it. Even though the risk is classified as Class II, don’t try to sort out the foreign material and use the rest of the bag.
- Check where you bought it. If you purchased it at Wegmans, you can return it there for a full refund. For other retailers, contact that store directly, since return policies for recalled products vary by chain.
- Contact Lundberg directly if needed. The company’s customer support line can help with refund questions if your retailer can’t process one.
- Dispose of it safely if you don’t want to return it. Throwing the rice away in household trash is an acceptable alternative to returning it.
- Check the rest of your pantry. Because the affected bags have a February 2027 best-before date, it’s easy to have bought this rice months ago and still have it sitting unopened at the back of a cupboard.
Keeping an eye on official recall channels is worth doing beyond this one incident, too. The FDA maintains a running list of recalls at fda.gov, and USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service covers meat, poultry, and egg products separately. Consumers who want a broader sense of their rights when a company or retailer doesn’t cooperate with a recall or refund request can also check general federal consumer protection resources, which is the same agency behind rules like the one covered in our FTC Click-to-Cancel Rule explainer.
A Simple Three-Step Check
Given how much conflicting detail is floating around this recall — different state counts, different retailer lists, even different lot code formats reported across outlets — it helps to boil the process down to three steps you can do in under a minute per bag:
- Find the UPC and lot code. Both are printed on the bottom seal of the bag, not on the front label. Flip the bag over and look for a small printed code near the seal.
- Match against the identifiers, not the brand alone. A bag can say “Lundberg” and still be perfectly safe if the UPC, lot code, and best-before date don’t match. Brand name recognition isn’t enough on its own.
- When in doubt, don’t cook it. If any part of the printed code is smudged, cut off, or hard to read, treat the bag as a match and contact the retailer or manufacturer rather than guessing.
This same three-step approach works for the separate Ben’s Original recall too — just swap in that product’s batch codes instead of the Lundberg UPC and lot numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What rice is recalled in 2026?
Lundberg Family Farms Regenerative Organic Certified White Jasmine Rice in 32-ounce bags is recalled due to possible foreign material contamination. Separately, select Ben’s Original Ready Rice Long Grain White, Whole Grain Brown, and Long Grain & Wild Rice products are recalled due to possible small stones. These are two unrelated recalls.
How do I know if my rice is part of the recall?
For the Lundberg recall, check for UPC 073416040281, lot code 260201MA or 260202MA, and a best-before date of February 1 or February 2, 2027. For the Ben’s Original recall, check the specific batch codes listed on the bottom seal of the package against the batch codes above.
Is the white rice recall 2026 dangerous?
The FDA classified the Lundberg recall as Class II, meaning any health effects would likely be temporary or medically reversible, with a remote probability of serious harm. It is not classified as an immediate life-threatening hazard, but affected rice should still not be consumed.
Which states received the recalled Lundberg rice?
Reports differ slightly, but the most consistently cited states are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Some sources also list Louisiana and Virginia. Because reporting is inconsistent, it’s worth checking your rice regardless of which state you live in.
Can I get a refund for recalled rice?
Yes. Wegmans is confirmed to offer full refunds for the recalled Lundberg rice. If you bought it elsewhere, contact that retailer directly, or reach out to Lundberg Family Farms’ customer support for help.
Are other Lundberg rice products affected?
No. The recall is limited to the specific White Jasmine Rice lots identified by UPC and lot code above. Lundberg’s brown rice, basmati rice, wild rice blends, and Carolina Gold Rice Middlins are not part of this recall.
Was any new rice recalled in August 2026, or is this the same recall from April?
It’s the same recall. The FDA’s enforcement database republished and expanded the original April recall notice in late August 2026, which is why it resurfaced in news coverage and search trends months after the initial announcement. No new contaminated product entered stores in August.
Do I need to throw away all my rice, just to be safe?
No. Only rice matching the specific UPC, lot codes, and best-before dates listed for the Lundberg recall, or the specific batch codes listed for the Ben’s Original recall, is affected. Other rice brands, other Lundberg varieties, and other batches of the same products are not part of either recall and are safe to cook and eat normally.
Bottom Line
The white rice recall 2026 centers on Lundberg Family Farms White Jasmine Rice, recalled for possible foreign material contamination, alongside a separate and unrelated Ben’s Original Ready Rice recall over possible small stones. Both are classified as Class II, meaning the realistic health risk is limited, but neither should be ignored if you have matching product at home. Check your pantry against the UPC, lot codes, and best-before dates listed above, and contact your retailer or the manufacturer directly for a refund if you find a match. Given how much the state and retailer lists vary across news coverage, the safest move is simply to check the printed codes on your own bag rather than assume you’re in the clear based on where you live or shopped.