How Did E. Coli Get Into Nestle's Cookie Dough?
USA Today is reporting that the FDA is "stumped" by the presence of E. coli 0157:H7 in Nestle Tollhouse Cookie Dough, which was recalled last week. How does bacteria normally associated with raw ground beef find its way into our buckets of delicious cookie dough? Some speculation, inside.
Tests haven't yet confirmed the presence of E. coli in the cookie dough, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state officials, and reports of what victims ate suggest the cookie dough was the culprit.
E. coli sickness is usually the result of eating contaminated beef, especially ground beef, so it's left everyone confused how this could happen in cookie dough. Bill Marler, a food safety lawyer who has litigated prominent E. coli cases offers, and rebuts, some hypotheses:
E. coli can contaminate milk; Wikipedia notes that it can get into milk from the udder or processing machines. It's unlikely that Nestle was using raw milk, though, and pasteurization would kill the bacteria.
E. coli can also be spread through poor hygiene by someone with the bacteria in his system (say by eating undercooked hamburger). An employee who didn't wash his hands after coming into contact with contaminated feces or anuses might be the source, but Marler doubts that it was an employee, given the size of the outbreak (illnesses have been reported in 29 states).
Marler notes that your typical dirty processing culprits, rats and mice, might have spread the bacteria, but warns that "always be aware that somewhere in the background likely lurks a cow." With milkfat and whey both on the list of ingredients, we wonder if either was responsible.
Nestle Recall Leaves a Mystery in Its Wake [WaPo]
So, How the Hell Does Cow Shit (E. coli O157:H7) Get Into Nestle's Toll House Cookie Dough? [Marler Blog]
(Photo: prep4md and jelene)
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Comments:
Don't go up 5th street to Baskin Robins past dark either.. lurking cows are not your friends.
What about eggs?
More regulation please. Let's add an E. Coli tax to all of our foods to fund specific research into supply chain management and tracking. I suggest we develop nano-transcievers and attach them to E. Coli bacteria in order to trace the spread. We could even name them and have a personalized E. Coli tracking system.
"Oh you got the Kevin string of E. Coli. Hey, the Kevin string infected InsertFamousPersonhere last month! So... that makes you sort of famous too!"
27.2% tax should do the trick.
No matter how bad you may think your job is, remember that you (probably) won't ever have to worry about coming in contact with "contaminated anuses" during the course of your day.
"Normally associated with ground beef"? What about spinach and jalapenos, to name a couple recent non-beef culprits?
Also, The Lurking Cows would be a good band name.
If the E. coli came from the milkfat or the whey, then it's possible that other products besides cookie dough are contaminated. That's what you get when you send real food like milk to a factory to be broken into pieces, then ship the pieces to other factories to be assembled into "food".
Follow the recipe on the Tollhouse chocolate chips bag to make your own E.coli free cookies. Make the following adjustments to create truly awesome cookies:
Brown the butter in a pan first. Put over medium heat and just let it melt, foam up, then turn brown. Also, instead of 2 eggs, use 1 egg and 1 egg yolk. Finally, increase the brown sugar by 1/4 cup and decrease the regular sugar by the same amount.
"An employee who didn't wash his hands after coming into contact with contaminated feces or anuses might be the source."
Hmmm. Suddenly not hungry...
Not such a picky point: E. Coli is a virus and it hardier than a bacteria. There are few medicines that help with viral infections and many that help with bacterial infections unless you get the dreaded MRSA.
So what you're saying there is that everyone was so focused on making sure that rats weren't infesting the plant that nobody noticed the cow scrounging around?
@larrymac: I think they may be referring to a specific strain of E. Coli. Most mammals have E. Coli in their digestive tracts which can be identified as originating from that species of animal. Contamination of fruits and vegetables is often due to fecal contamination (often from human sources, no less) affecting the crop on the field, like with the strawberry hepatitis scare a few years back.
By occam's razor, and knowing a little about industrial hygenics, there was probably someone at the plant who neglected to thoroughly wash their hands after handling food (about 4-8 hours after eating it)
Just another example of why mass producing food into premade products has a high risk factor. The tons of funky additives and stabilizers just add to the reasons not to consume stuff like this. Cookies are one of the simpler things to make so why buy premade cookie dough of dubious background?
Probably some disgusting idiot who left the shithouse without washing his/her hands. I can't tell you how often I see people doing this where I work. Luckily we don't deal with food. But still. it is enough so that I open all doors with papertowels or handwipes and such. People are pigs. :(
@Elijah Keller: Dang, I wish I could go back and edit the first post. I was wrong and don't want to propagate bad information. If someone only reads the top level post, the bad info will propagate.
@ColoradoShark: I beg to differ too. Escherichia coli are most definitely bacteria. They have cell walls, more organelles, etc. Definitely bacteria.
Oh, and there are antibiotics that treat MRSA: [en.wikipedia.org]
Um, poo. Really not that mysterious at all. Whether the ultimate transmission vector was milk, milkfat, rats, mice, whatever, with e. coli it always comes back to poo. In today's world of the corporate food/industrial complex, there's really no way to avoid it.
Bon appetit!
Nestle is clearly concerned about the bad publicity. Last night I participated in a market research study that started with "what type of refrigerated cookie dough do you buy for your family?" and ended with "what do you know about any possible product recalls regarding refrigerated cookie dough?" Included questions about my perception of Nestle vs Toll House vs Pillsbury - everything from taste to safety.
I thought the questions about which company was more "green" was confusing. Being a pain in the ass by that point, I asked if they meant "green" as in eco-friendly or "green" as in colorful mold. It went downhill from there...
Has no one mentioned the possibility of someone intentionally contaminating the product? In this day and age I can easily see someone trying to make a point about there not being enough regulation on big-business, mass-produced food stuffs.
@bohemian: The funky additives and stabilizers are what keep the cookies from killing you every time (now it's just sometimes)
@JRock: I'm a Registered Nurse. Just yesterday I applied Preparation H to a patient with c-diff.
You were saying....
99% chance it wasn't passed from a human if it's 0157:H7. They'd be hurting bad enough to skip work, no matter how much they wanted to be there.
"Tests haven't yet confirmed the presence of E. coli in the cookie dough"
.. So what is it, is there e coli there or not? more fear mongering I'm guessing. ;)
@astraelraen: Nah, I think the media's public shaming in recent years has been far more effective than any gov't-run program.
Talk to the lettuce producers in California & tomato growers across the country. They got burned badly and now have internal voluntary standards that far exceed any gov't regulation.
Those aren't chocolate chips!
That pic is horrifying!
I've bought that cookie dough before and it was ok. But never again will I be able to look at it the same. Thanks for saving me the calories!
@Trulymadlyme: Your risk of getting salmonella from raw eggs is fairly low. Granted, it's not a risk worth taking for some (children, elderly, people with compromised immune systems).
@Jessica Schwartz: I wound up in the hospital a couple of years ago with C. diff. When I got the diagnosis, a sympathetic friend, who'd also had it years prior, said, "Ah yes, also known as the Neverending Amazing Technicolor Rainbow Shits!" That crap (no pun intended) was unreal.
My sympathies for your unpleasant job duties, but as a former hospital patient: Thank you!
@AllToAll,ByMyMustard!_GitEmSteveDave: Evolution which was caused by peoples misuse of anti biotics and helped along by people using anti bacterial everything.
@bishophicks: I melt the butter but dont brown it, then I mixed the liquid butter in with everything else. Also for a fluffier cookie use 2 eggs and then just the whites of a 3rd egg. For a fluffier AND moister cookie that stays soft do the same as above but also add about 1/8 to 1/4 cup cooking oil.
Mmmmm cookies!
@bohemian: Well mixing up the ingredients yourself is just so damn hard and time consuming. Its worth the risk of sickness and possibly death to save yourself the 5 min and couple extra dishes!
@parad0x360: I agree that antibiotics get misused, but that's not a factor in this situation. Just because a bacteria is no longer susceptible to such-and-such antibiotic doesn't mean it's also more able to survive high temperatures. Unless by "anti bacterial everything" you mean putting their hands in an oven. :)
I saw that at the bookstore last weekend. I didn't see the person's face, just heard her leave without washing (I was in the stall). It skeeved me out; I didn't want to touch ANY of the books after that!
Raw cookie dough is just plain gross. Cook it!
Seriously, though, I'm happy with how Nestle has handled the recall. Very professional; they are obviously taking it seriously.
@Sbrools:
the term organelles typically refers to more advanced cells like eukaryotes, not prokaryotes like E. coli though. Ill let it go, because you could rightly argue E coli internal structures such as ribosomes 'are' organelles.
Given how tough and strong bacteria have gotten lately due to evolution, I have no problems believing a under-pasteurized batch of milk found it's way into a batch of milk, or the milk was exposed to it during shipping. Once thrown into a huge mixture, it gets time to multiply, and then it's thrown into a little house with all the things that make it grow big and strong. Assume one batch was contaminated, and they don't wash out the mixers until the night shift, five or six batches can go through that same mixer, etc....