Nestlé recalls cookie dough products - Raw dough causes several to fall ill

Nestlé recalls cookie dough products - Raw dough causes several to fall ill
By Jonathan Birchall in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 19 2009 17:46 | Last updated: June 19 2009 17:46
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94ba2f8a-5cec-11de-9d42-00144feabdc0.html


Nestlé’s US baked products division on Friday announced a voluntary recall of its entire range of Toll House frozen cookie dough, an iconic US brand, after reports that a number of people had fallen ill after eating the uncooked product.

The recall comes as the US House of Representatives is considering legislation that would strengthen the regulatory powers of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Nestlé said in a statement that the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control were “conducting an investigation into reported e.coli 0157:H7 illnesses that may be related to consumption of raw cookie dough”.

The FDA has had reports of 66 people falling ill after eating dough, with 25 of them subsequently hospitalised.

Nestlé said a number said they had consumed its Toll House dough, although “the e.coli strain implicated in this investigation has not been detected in our product”.

It also pointed out that the dough’s packaging included a strong warning against eating the dough raw.

The recall is the latest in a series of major food safety recalls in the US. Over the winter months, more than 200 companies and over 2,000 products were affected by a recall of peanut products, after an outbreak of salmonella contamination traced to a processing plant in Georgia.

That was followed this spring by a smaller recall of pistachio nuts that affected scores of brands, following an outbreak of illness and the discovery of contamination at a processing plant in California.

The new food safety act currently before the House of Representatives would include providing the FDA with mandatory recall authority it currently lacks, and requiring high risk food processing facilities to be inspected at least every 6-18 months.

The bill would also require electronic traceability systems that are able to track identified contaminated food back to its source, and require all domestic and foreign food producers to register with the FDA.

It would also give the FDA authority over the production and storage standards for fresh fruit and vegetables - an industry that has been rocked by a series of contamination scandals in recent years.