FDA Warns Consumers Not to Eat Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough

by Barbara McPherson | June 20, 2009 at 09:35 am

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Now it's cookie dough with the "hamburger disease" bacterium! The FDA has just issued a warning to consumers to not eat Nestle Toll House prepackaged cookie dough.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are warning consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7 (a bacterium that causes food borne illness).

The FDA is advising people who have purchased Nestle Toll House cookie dough to throw it away. While the bacterium - E. coli O157:H7 will die when exposed to the heat of the oven, handling the cookie dough may spread the bacteria around, contaminating work surfaces.

The CDC is investigating this latest outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 across the US. To date, 66 cases of food poisoning have been reported. Of those 66 cases of food poisoning, twenty-five required hospitalization. Seven of those hospitalized because of the Nestle Toll House cookie dough have endured Hemolytic Uremic Syndrom(HUS). No deaths have been reported related to this latest outbreak of E. coli O157:H7.
It is inadvisable to eat raw cookie dough at any time due to the possible contamination by bacteria in the ingredients used. In particular, people now need to be careful of eating any product that has raw eggs in it due to the possibility of contamination by Salmonella bacteria. While there is a 'cookie dough' flavoured ice-cream, it is very unlikely that there is actually raw dough in the frozen mix. Finding E. coli O157:H7 in Nestle Toll House cookie dough is puzzling and troubling because E. coli bacteria are found in the guts and bowels of warm blooded animals. We have seen food poisoning by E. coli O157:H7 in meat but would not expect that bacteria normally associated with excrement would be found in cookie dough.