Walmart Is Getting Sued for Selling Cheese Filled with Wood

Benjamin SnyderBy Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

Parmesan Cheese
Bowl of fresh parmesan cheese. (Photo by: MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images)
Photograph by MyLoupe—UIG via Getty Images

Walmart (WMT) is getting sued for a surprising reason, especially for cheese-lovers.

The retailer has reportedly received a lawsuit for selling Parmesan cheese with wood filler, Bloomberg reported. The cheese sold in stores had been labeled pure and 100% Parmesan, but the Walmart Great Value band was ultimately found to contain other ingredients.

In fact, there was reportedly as much as 10% cellulose, which is a wood-based agent for anti-clumping, found in the product, according to the complaint, which was filed in a Manhattan federal court. A customer Marc Moschetta filed the lawsuit, saying, “the 100% representation was false and mis-characterized the amount and percentage of Parmesan cheese in the container.”

Moschetta wants a class action lawsuit in order to press Walmart on the matter, Bloomberg reported. The move comes after an earlier investigation by the publication as well as another investigation by the Food and Drug Administration, as Fortune wrote earlier this month.

There was reportedly a similar lawsuit filed against Kraft (KRFT) last week in San Francisco.

“We know earning customer trust starts with high standards for the products we carry. We take this matter seriously,” Randy Hargrove, a spokesperson for the retailer, said in a statement to Fortune. “We will review the allegations once we have received the complaint and will respond appropriately with the court.”

This post has been updated to include Walmart’s comment to Fortune.