I saw these hot new products from Pillsbury at Ralphs this weekend; I should have picked one up for a day like today (yes, it was one of those days). Well, hopefully I can win one (plus a cookie jar, a nice lil tote bag that I can use to carry MORE cookie dough, and a grocery notebook so I can write down which cookies I have to remember to buy) in Megan from Megan’s Munchies ‘s contest! Hopefully Megan will show a cookie blogger sister some love — but if not, you might have a chance to win!

One of my favorite news sites, CNN, has reported that the FDA’s investigation into Nestle Toll House’s cookie dough E. coli contamination has hit a dead end. Apparently the sample of cookie dough that held a strain of E. coli obtained from a Nestle USA manufacturing facility in Virginia was not the same strain that hospitalized 35 people. As of Thursday the investigation of the plant was officially over. Despite the E. coli being found in the cookie dough, there were no E. coli strains found on equipment, shifting the blame away from Nestle. And after conducting 1,000+ tests at the facility after the outbreak, taking apart the production line and testing all the equipment in the facility, you’d better believe that the FDA almost wanted to find something wrong here so they can cite the source of the outbreak and prevent more widespread sickness.

Following this great news, Nestle USA spokeswoman Laurie MacDonald said they’re going to recontinue making our favorite snacks at the plant. They’ve purchased and are going to thoroughly test new lots of ingredients. In terms of when they’ll be back in the freezer aisle, though, that won’t happen for some time unfortunately. But when it does happen, there will be a new label that will indicate freshness and a new batch.

Well, that sucks. As my favorite pre-made dough, it’s really disappointing to hear that I won’t see it on the shelves for “quite some time.” Will I have to resort to Pillsbury?!?! Obviously this is going to mean a huge sales decline for Nestle, not only because of the bad press but because of how long it is going to take them to be able to sell cookie dough again. Big sad face I wonder if the new packaging will put a spike in their sales… or if it’ll bust a Tropicana orange juice repackaging nightmare.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/10/toll.house.dough.e.coli/

Looks like the Obama administration heard us! As a direct result of the slew of recently tainted foods, President Obama created a new food safety panel that created new rules for eggs, poultry, beef, leafy greens, melons and tomatoes. Of the new rules, these are the ones that will pertain to cookies:

• The FDA will help the food industry establish better tracing systems to track the origins of a bacterial outbreak.
• A new network will be established to help the many agencies that regulate food safety to communicate better.
• Egg and poultry producers will have to follow new standards designed to reduce salmonella contamination.
• The FDA and the Agriculture Department also will create new positions to better oversee food safety.

Overall this should (keyword: should) lead to fewer food-related sicknesses and deaths. I might want to see some incentive for manufacturers to keep their facilities clean as well; their goal right now is to make money, and they will probably take shortcuts necessary for a shorter lead time and for a lower cost which is most likely 90% of the blame for food contamination.

What does this mean for the cookie industry? Well, people will still eat cookie dough raw. And it’ll be too expensive to pasteurize all the eggs that goes into the dough. So Nestle and Nabisco and Pillsbury will all have stricter regulations on what they can put on the shelves and if something DOES get overlooked, they hopefully will be able to find the source of the outbreak faster and stop it faster. I’m not really sure if it will affect those in small bakeries or restaurants, but hopefully by the time the dough or the ingredients to make the dough are safe.

All I want is to be able to eat cookies safely. Is that too much to ask for!?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090707/ap_on_he_me/us_food_safety

So Bill Marler of the Marler Blog writes of a hypothetical situation in which someone (or some people) intentionally poisoned the cookie dough. He cites multiple instances in which food was purposely contaminated with disease and chemicals. You might think he is pessimistic and thinks ill of the human race, but he says:

The reason I bring this up is not to mark another anniversary of 9/11, not because I actually think that food terrorism really is the cause of this week’s E. coli cookie dough outbreak, but I wonder if it would have made any difference in our government’s ability to figure out there was an outbreak, to figure out the cause, and to stop it before it sickened so many.

He’s bringing up this issue to bring to the attention the lack of protection our government provides us when it comes to foodborne illnesses (something he believes can easily and very readily happen today):

The [Centers for Disease Control & Prevention] publicly admits that it manages to count and track only one of every forty foodborne illness victims, and that its inspectors miss key evidence as outbreaks begin.

I honestly think (and hope) that it was a carelessly looked over mistake. I’m not really sure who’s got it out there for adolescent girls (the majority of the raw cookie dough eaters out there) but the issue here is how much regulation there is when it comes to providing us with safe cookies and cookie dough. Granted, we’re not supposed to be eating raw cookie dough, but this is E. Coli which isn’t supposed to be found in raw cookie dough (salmonella, I can understand, due to the eggs. but E. Coli?) Even the NY Times has gotten in on this:

Coming after problems with tainted tomatoes, peanuts and pistachios, this is another warning about the weakness of the nation’s food safety system and why Congress needs to fix it. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently approved an excellent bill that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s powers. The full House and the Senate — with White House support — need to move this package forward.

Food contamination has been happening way too often recently. Tomatoes, peanut butter paste, now cookie dough? We need to have the ability to trust our current system and be able to eat what’s provided to us on the shelves. I’ve kind of lost faith in our governmental system to do anything right around all of their inefficiencies and sheer number of things they have to take care of. I can only hope that this influx of tainted foods will open food companies’ eyes to the dangers of lacking clean and well-maintained facilities. If anything [putting my business / marketing / corporate hat on], it looks really bad on the brand. So if it’s one thing to care about, and if it’s not my health, the brands should be worrying about themselves, their brand value, their market share, their customers, their pages on Facebook and their followers on Twitter. With the internet, information is largely free-flowing and companies in every industry have to be much more careful and aware of what they are doing.

*steps off the soapbox*

What do you think? Do you think food-borne illnesses are on terrorists’ minds? What do you think of how the Center for Disease Control & Prevention tries to prevent and handle situations like these?

Uh-oh.. things aren’t looking good for Nestle. It looks like the FDA found E. Coli in a sample of cookie dough in a Nestle USA manufacturing facility in Danville, VA (same facility I wrote about earlier) yesterday. They’re doing more tests to figure out how the bacteria got into the dough in the first place. Note: the actual factory is clean — meaning the contaminant probably came from outside sources directly in contact with the dough — ie, the ingredients. It’s interesting because the biggest worry regarding raw cookie dough is salmonella from the uncooked eggs; this E. Coli thing is new. According to this article, “none of the main ingredients in the dough – such as butter, chocolate, flour, milk or eggs – is known to host E.coli 0157: H7.” My theory? A factory worker in the plant that produces the infected ingredient went to the bathroom and didn’t wash his / her hands. I also heard that all food production facilities don’t have to be extremely clean; in other words they’ll pass inspections if they have a few bugs. Could a bug have left its infected feces on one of the machines? Do bugs carry E. Coli or is that just a human / cattle thing? Not sure how that works… Also worrisome is the fact that the plants that deliver the cookie dough ingredients probably also deliver the same ingredients to other food manufacturers.

The press release states:

SOLON, Ohio, June 29, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Nestle USA’s Baking Division was informed today by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it has found and confirmed evidence of E. coli 0157:H7 in a retained production sample of 16.5 oz. Nestle Toll House refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough bar. The product has a day code of 9041 and a “Best before 10 JUN 2009″ notation.

For the official full-length press release: http://www.verybestbaking.com/products/tollhouse/dough/recall-06292009.pdf

Sources:

• http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/30/contaminated-sample-of-nestle-cookie-dough-found/
  (btw I love how the WSJ cites that most of the 69 infected people have been adolescent girls)
• http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/On-your-radar/Contamination/E.coli-contamination-confirmed-in-Nestle-dough

Uh-oh!! Looks like my favorite cookie dough company is being blamed for not releasing inspection reports or giving access to inspectors into their Toll House production facility in Danville, VA “which is now at the center of a suspected outbreak of E. coli bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration said.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• 300,000 units of prepackaged, refrigerated Toll House brand cookie dough were recalled
• At least 69 people have been sickened
• The span of the sicknesses has reached 29 states
• At least 2 lawsuits were filed against Nestle

Let’s get to the bottom of this. Clean the facility and keep making more (safe) cookie dough!!!

Source: http://www.attorneyatlaw.com/2009/06/nestle-withheld-info-on-cookie-dough-contamination-fda-says/