Natural Grocers is recalling its Natural Grocers brand organic 2-pound mung beans after customers reported sharp glass fragments in the product. The company, formally Vitamin Cottage Natural Food Markets, Inc. of Lakewood, Colorado, announced the recall on Oct. 22 and said no illnesses or injuries have been reported.
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The affected bags carry UPC 000080112600 and were shipped to stores in 22 states beginning on June 10, 2026. Shoppers who bought the beans are told to stop using them immediately.
The mung bean lots and the glass complaints
The FDA posting of the recall describes the product as 2-pound organic mung beans in clear plastic bags, sold as a bulk organic item. The lots are identified by pack dates of 26-160, 26-173, 26-196, 26-224 and 26-258, printed in the lower left corner of the label. The notice lists no best-by date, which means the pack date and the UPC are the only identifiers a shopper has to match against the bag in the pantry.
The trigger was consumer complaints rather than a company inspection. In the company’s words, “The recall is being initiated after receiving customer complaints about sharp glass fragments in the product.” The notice does not say how many complaints came in, what size the fragments were, or where in the supply chain the glass entered the beans, and it names no supplier. The company posted the same announcement on its own product recall page, adding that the action is being taken with the knowledge of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A roundup of that day’s notices, eFoodAlert’s October 22 list, logged the item as a food safety recall for foreign matter contamination (glass), with the same five pack dates and the 2-pound size.
Where the beans shipped
Distribution is wide for a bulk organic staple. The notice lists shipments to Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. That spread tracks the chain’s footprint: Natural Grocers is publicly traded and runs stores mostly west of the Mississippi River, according to its encyclopedia entry, which also notes that a first Wisconsin store opened in 2026.
The earliest affected lots began shipping on June 10, 2026, so beans in some pantries could be four months old. Mung beans are a dry legume that keeps well, so a shopper who bought a bag over the summer may still have most of it on the shelf. Checking the pack date on the label takes a minute, and the recall notice makes clear that the glass was found by customers in the product itself, not on the packaging, which is why the company asks for the beans to be discarded or returned rather than picked over.
The company has long marketed itself on organic food. According to the same entry, it began in 1955 as a door-to-door sales operation run by Margaret and Philip Isely, opened its first Lakewood store in 1963, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2012 under the ticker NGVC. A store-brand bulk bag like this one is the kind of private-label staple that shoppers choose partly because of that organic reputation, which makes a glass complaint on the shelf a more pointed problem than it would be for a generic commodity item.
What glass in food can do and how the FDA treats it
The company warned that eating glass could cause tooth damage, mouth and throat lacerations, or intestinal perforation. Those are the injuries the FDA has in mind when it treats hard or sharp objects as a basis for enforcement. Its compliance policy guide on foods adulterated by hard or sharp foreign objects sets a range of 7 mm to 25 mm in length for objects in ready-to-eat foods that can support seizure, and notes that smaller objects rarely cause trauma except in special-risk groups such as infants, surgery patients and the elderly.
Legally, the FDA grounds such actions in 21 U.S.C. 342(a)(1), the same guidance explains, which treats food as adulterated if it contains a deleterious substance that may render it injurious to health. The company’s notice does not say how large the fragments were, so whether they fall in the range the FDA uses for seizure is not stated; what the notice does say is that customers described them as sharp and that the company chose to pull the product from sale and from kitchens across all 22 states.Refund and contact details
Consumers can discard the beans or return them for a full refund or credit. Questions go to Natural Grocers at 303-226-1434, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mountain time, or to the media email address given on the notice. Because the notice lists no best-by date, shoppers who poured the beans into jars may no longer have the label showing a pack date. The notice does not address that situation, and its instruction to discontinue use immediately applies to the 2-pound organic mung beans generally, so an unlabeled jar of beans from Natural Grocers is best treated as unconfirmed.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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