Sample of Nestlé Cookie Dough Has E. Coli Bacteria
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: January 13, 2010
The headline should read Samples...Have...
Two batches of Toll House refrigerated cookie dough made in Nestle's Danville, Virginia plant last week were contaminated with a strain of E. Coli.
[Nestlé] said that after last summer's recall, it began testing samples of every batch of dough for E. coli O157:H7, the toxic strain behind last year's outbreak.
This might indicate that the two batches were contaminated with O157:H7, although the NYT article does not say so explicitly. |
Some progress in corporate responsibility has been made.
The company said that after last year's recall it began testing all the ingredients entering its Danville plant, which is where most of the refrigerated dough is made. It also began testing every batch of dough and holding the product in the plant until the results were known.
None of this was done before last year's recall, which is disgraceful. Besides making victims sick, these wilful failures to test ensured that the contamination source could not be identified. Let's be grateful for progress, however slight. In last week's incident, either the raw material testing wasn't good enough to identify contamination, or the contamination happened in the plant. Also, no recall is necessary because the products were not shipped into commerce.
I wish the NYT article had reported if any contaminated raw materials have been identified and rejected since last year's recall, and whether any other contaminated batches were identified before last week. This article is better than nothing, though. I'm glad someone there is paying attention. |
