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